Ardor Animorum
by AristideCauquemaire
Summary: The second part/sequel of Calor Cupiditatis, in which past sins unexpectedly catch up with Scorpius Malfoy in person, roles are reversed and tables are turned... Next Generation, Slash SM/JSP. Complete!
1. Chapter 1

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: _**SEQUEL**_, original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_Hello, sweetie! If you haven't read 'Calor Cupiditatis', I'd strongly advise you to go do that since __**this is a sequel**__ to that story._

_Also, unsurprisingly, this story, just like its prequel, is __still __**slash**__. It's still about two male humans falling in love and desiring each other and such. If that's not your cup of pumpkin juice, please make use of the 'back' button of your browser now. Thank you!_

_To all the others: Welcome back! Please enjoy! _

/

**Chapter 1**

/

"Pinch me," he whispered hoarsely at Mariella. He needed help tearing his eyes away, as soon as possible.

McGonagall was just explaining that Potter's outstanding marks in his Potion's N.E.W.T.s last year and his personally expressed interest in the subject matter had earned him this rare admission as a temporary student apprentice with full teacher's authority, given with consent of the Ministry's education department, the board of parents and the entire Hogwarts staff.

'Temporary' apparently meaning 'for at least a year'.

"What?"

Potter, still standing up and not seeming the least bit uncomfortable doing it even though all eyes were on him, glanced at McGonagall with an unreadable expression. Confident, indifferent.

"I said, pinch me, damn you," he choked between clenched teeth.

Potter looked even more mature and self-confident than Scorpius remembered him, he held his chin so high that his face seemed positively regal. The dark grey robe he was wearing accented his strong shoulders and his height. It looked like he had grown another two centimetres over the summer holidays, Scorpius thought. Or maybe that was just his posture.

He felt his stomach curl up on itself with twofold fear. Fear that he would look over at him and notice him watching. Fear that he wouldn't look over at him because he didn't give a shit.

Mariella frowned and finally complied. Being the sister of three elder brothers, she really knew how to pinch properly. It actually hurt so horribly Scorpius had to hold back a yelp of pain, and water had welled up in his eyes when she was done. He cupped his arm and rubbed the throbbing spot on his biceps. And eventually managed to turn away, back toward the table, hunching his shoulders and only incidentally hiding behind Mariella.

"Satisfied?" she hissed. When he nodded, she sighed exasperatedly. "Merlin, Malfoy. You're being melodramatic. I really need you to get a grip."

"_How?_" he asked through clenched teeth and threw her a teary-eyed glance that spoke of all the things he hadn't told her before. Of how James was already a fixed point, a constant in his head and how it was therefore impossible to bear being in the same castle with the real, actual Potter, much less in the same Potions classroom – how it was just _too crowded_ with Potters. How it reversed all his efforts to disentangle his confusion, just like that, how all his letter-writing had instantly proved to be nothing but vain attempts of convincing himself that things were sorted out now in his heart and that it made sense, _any_ sense whatsoever. How old shame and renewed lust just surged through him with each laboured breath just by looking at him standing up there. It just wasn't _fair_. _Why couldn't it have just been that stupid spell? Everything would have been simple._

Mariella, for the third time in her life, was lost for words and said nothing. She merely looked concerned, the wrinkle between her eyebrows giving away the hint of aversion.

"Yo, Malfoy. You look like you're going to hurl," Bagman suddenly commented and pulled everyone's scattered attentions toward him.

Scorpius faintly noted how ironic it was that his new year at Hogwarts basically started with the same sentence – and the same feeling – with which the old one had ended. And for the same reason.

The arrival of food saved him from having to reply. Everyone dug in with a cheer, instantly forgetting everyone and everything except their own plate and rumbling tummy.

Scorpius ate mostly because it would look suspicious if he didn't. It was oddly tasteless in his mouth and he found himself chewing each bite too long so it got almost difficult to swallow it down. His head automatically kept track of the conversation for him, and he even managed to contribute on cue so no one except Mariella noticed that anything was amiss.

When the feast was over and everyone started to file out of the Great Hall and toward their common rooms and dormitories, Potter had vanished from the teachers' table and was nowhere to be found. Scorpius had never known that it was possible to be disappointed and overjoyed at the same time at the sight of an empty chair.

Two hours later he stared at his timetable for the year. Everyone who looked over his shoulder expressed their condolences and berated him for retaining too many electives. So many hours crammed into six short days and certain constellations of lessons on certain days – especially the double Charms, double DA, double History, double Runes on Mondays, starting tomorrow – earned him numerous ooh's and compassionate pats on the back.

All he really noted was that he had Potions on Wednesdays, Fridays and alternate Saturdays.

That meant he might see Potter again in three days.

Three endlessly long, excruciatingly short days.

/

Scorpius tried his hardest not to look agitated.

There was nothing he could do against the agitation inside that accompanied him from the moment he woke up – and then truly flared up when he turned up the shower tap – until the moment he fell asleep again. It got worse during walks down corridors, and during mealtimes in the Great Hall. James Potter was never there, but he figured that it was all just a matter of statistics and time. Statistically, each minute that passed by without two residents of the same castle meeting one another increased the likelihood that they would meet the next minute. That was why Tuesday was much worse than Monday.

But he didn't look agitated, or at least not significantly more annoyed than all the other seventh years, so he managed to blend in somehow.

That was, until an owl arrived during dinner.

The slim little thing hopped across the table, so featherweight that it didn't manage to knock anything over but somehow managing to create a mess anyway. The others grumbled as Scorpius single-handedly undid the ribbon on the leg the owl presented to him.

He assumed it was from Tiffany, something about Quidditch again. Or maybe even from the library, from the newly appointed students' clerk he had met yesterday when looking for a tome he would need for his Runes homework. She had said that it was in the mildew bath, and that she would let him know when it was good to go again.

He choked on the spoonful of porridge when the note clearly read '_To: S. Malfoy. From: J.S. Potter'_.

"What'chu got?" Prince, who had chosen to sit next to him this evening – to get a table between himself and Bagman, no doubt – asked nosily.

And snatched the note away from him.

White hot panic shot up his spine and his Quidditch reflexes kicked in. He dropped the spoon he'd still been holding – it landed with a loud clang that scared the owl away -, grabbed Prince's wrist hard with his left hand and closed his right around the fingers and the note they held, covering it so Prince wouldn't be able to read the name.

"Give that back right now," he all but snarled and slowly rose from his seat to tower over his schoolmate and to have the advantage of gravity.

Shocked silence fell around them, even spreading to the Ravenclaw table. People turned around and stared.

Scorpius didn't care. His heart was beating, fluttering in his throat. He stared Prince right in the eye and repeated, very slowly, "Give it back, Prince. I'm serious."

Prince, as usual when he didn't know what to do, tried to act cool. "Yes, you are," he drawled, not breaking eye contact and tightly holding on to the parchment. "You want it back, huh? Maybe we can make a deal."

"Here's the deal, then," Scorpius said, barely loud enough for Prince to hear. "You give it back and I don't break your fingers."

He actually saw Prince swallow. Which was ridiculous, really. Prince was at least six stone heavier and half a head taller than him, and Scorpius didn't have anywhere near the kind of strength such a feat would require. But Prince believed it anyway.

"Is there a problem here?" a voice suddenly asked.

Reflexively, Scorpius let go of his schoolmate's arm, and turned his head. And then he just stared.

The first thing he thought was that James had really got taller. It wasn't just posture.

And, if possible, more attractive. _Manlier_, something in his head shouted.

The third thing was that the likelihood to see him tomorrow would statistically be plummeting now. Scorpius decided there and then that statistics was a bunch of doxy crap.

James' hand darted forward and plucked the note from Prince's still-lifted hand.

"That's mine," Scorpius meant to say, but his throat was suddenly very dry and only 'mine' made it out audibly.

Potter turned the little note in his fingers and seemed to read the script on the envelope. "Indeed it is," he eventually said lightly.

For a tense moment, Scorpius feared that he would expose him. Right here, in front of his friends and schoolmates. One word, one gesture was all it would take.

And James knew it, Scorpius could see it in his face. He saw him contemplate.

Finally, handing the parchment back to Scorpius with a languid motion, James looked him dead in the eye and said with a frosty undertone, "Always handy when these come with a name, isn't it?"

Numbly, he took the note back, slid it deeply into his coat pocket and sank back down on the bench, weak-kneed.

"Measly assistant for a day and he's already acting like someone made him headmaster," Bagman commented snidely when Potter was out of earshot, while Shrew mumbled around a mouthful of potatoes, "What the hell was that all about?", and Prince grumbled, rubbing his sore knuckles, "Malfoy's got his monthlies, apparently."

Scorpius didn't hear what was said after that. He counted down fifteen seconds, mumbled "I forgot something" to no one in particular and got up in a hurry. He left the Great Hall at a pace, never turning his head or even looking up from the floor before him, feeling for the parchment in his pocket but not pulling it out until he was safely outside and around two corners.

The note was short and written in a neat script.

'_Tonight, 9 p.m. sharp, same place.  
>Don't you dare not to show.'<em>

And then, below that and slightly less neat – or maybe he was just imagining it? -

_'Wear your tie.'_

_/_

/**TBC**

_The tables are a-turning, yo. Be a dear, leave me a review!_


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_Boy, there's a spike in my story stats. Thank you for reading, dear readers :) I just hope that no one got confused - there were more visitors to the first chapter of Ardor than to the last of Calor, so some of you seem to have skipped something. _

_Thanks to GracefulWarrior, Rebecca1303, greenerwhereyouwater and SongOfTheShadows for favving, reviewing and/or following, respectively!_

_Now, on to chapter 2! Oh, and... the third warning totally applies for this chapter. Bit different from before... mhh. Enjoy!_

/

**Chapter 2**

/

When the door creaked shut behind him, very little light fell into the trophy room at 9 p.m. Just a faint glow of torches and candles through the narrow window, and a small halo remained that crept in through the crack under the door and the keyhole.

It was so dark, in fact, that he didn't even see Potter until he moved.

"Lose the wand," he said. His dark shape uncrossed its arms.

"I-" An almost involuntary sound.

"Put it on the shelf." A clear order.

"Potter-" A plea.

"Now." Emphatically.

Scorpius hesitated for several seconds. Then he complied, very aware that he was breaking Professor Finnigan's third rule: Avoid being disarmed at all costs. Then again, those rules applied only in combat situations, didn't they? Against hostile forces. Enemies.

He had always been aware that what he had done to James Potter would forever keep them from becoming friends, and that James would rightfully hate him. Now, for the first time he wondered whether he had done more than even that – whether he had made an enemy of him. In _that_ sense.

"Potter, I never meant-" With an undue amount of breath, he even managed to make it sound steady.

"Shut up."

He did.

"Stand over here."

When Scorpius didn't move, Potter came forward, grabbed the front of Scorpius' robe, shirt, tie and collar all at once and practically hauled him across the room. Scorpius bumped backwards into the shelf, accidentally biting his tongue in the process.

The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He felt clearly the wooden struts press against his shoulders, the small of his back and his backside. The shelf seemed to vibrate along in time with his pulse, like a huge drum skin. At the same time, it all felt unreal. Like a dream. A nightmare?

"Put the tie over your eyes. Like last time." Potter had let his robe go. His voice was void of inflection now, his face barely visible in the dimness.

But it was close. If Scorpius reached out with his hand, he knew he could touch it.

"Why?" The word sounded skinny. It almost cracked.

James didn't reply.

"Is this some sort of punishment?"

It didn't feel like it, other than that it reminded him acutely of the most miserable, most humiliating day of his life, and that his stomach was rotating with anxiety.

It didn't feel like _anything_ he could grasp. This was too weird and had quickly gone too far already for some elaborate revenge prank – not to mention that James Potter wasn't the type for that to begin with. It was confusing and frightening.

And exciting.

Scorpius gripped the shelf's struts so tightly his palms started to hurt. The pain reminded him that he couldn't just touch him, even though he was within reach. Right there.

"Do it," Potter said through clenched teeth.

Again, Scorpius complied. His fingers trembled so hard that he slipped twice while trying to loosen the Double Windsor that held his tie around his neck. When it was loose enough, he lifted it up, tilted his head back and pulled it tight again when it lay across his eyes.

Even though the room had been rather dark, not seeing anything at all – indeed, not even being able to open his eyes, to lift his eyelids – was different. Something like dread settled heavily in his tummy. He held on to the shelf as if for dear life.

For a long time, nothing happened.

"How does it feel, Malfoy?" Potter suddenly asked.

His voice seemed much closer. It seemed to fill out the entirety of the blackness around.

A reluctant twinge of arousal shot through him. "A- ... I'm...," he stammered.

"This is what you hoped would happen all along, isn't it?"

Another tug on the front of his robe made Scorpius readjust his grip on the bookshelf behind him, expecting to be pulled violently across the room again, just sightless this time which would make it much worse.

Instead, James threw open Scorpius' robe with a brusque motion, pulled out his shirt tails where he had tucked them in and started to unbutton his shirt.

Scorpius couldn't breathe. His entire body broke out in sweat.

A nightmare. A dream.

He didn't move, didn't even dare to lift his hands and defend himself... from... whatever it was that was happening to him. "P- Potter..."

"That's why you're not resisting at all," James observed, ignored his stuttering, pulled open Scorpius' belt and undid the button of his trousers.

Scorpius started squirming then, suddenly aware of the vulnerability of the body part he was about to expose, aware of how embarrassing it all was. But at the same time, the embarrassment was drowning in excitement that made his blood pound like hammer blows as it rushed through his body.

James Potter was touching him.

_James Potter_ was touching him.

James Potter was touching _him_.

Next time James' voice rang out, it was almost right next to his ear. Scorpius went rigid.

"You get off on this helplessness thing, don't you?" he asked with contempt.

"Aah," he breathed by the way of an answer. He was so warm. Potter's body heat raised his own, and his body trapped the warmth between them.

"I've been thinking about this during the holidays," Potter told him, his words tickling Scorpius' earlobe. "At first I took you for a sadist. Thought you just loved to humiliate and torment..."

While he spoke, he zipped open his fly. Slowly, deliberately. Scorpius inhaled with a trembling hiss at the sensation. "I thought it fit very well with that funny little spell of yours. Putting defenceless people in heat... Stripping away their dignity..."

He swallowed. His brain focussed on the word 'stripping' as Potter's nimble fingers peeled away his trousers from his crotch.

"But that's not right at all, is it?"

Cold air seemed to rush in when James suddenly took a step back. Scorpius' bared upper body broke out in goosebumps. He locked his jaw to suppress disappointed sounds and canted his hip to hide and protect the bulge between his thighs.

"The way you... presented yourself to me that last day," Potter mused. "The things you did..."

Feeling a touch to his neck, Scorpius held very still again. Potter's hand slid past his ear, to the back of his head, fleetingly touching the back of his neck which had to be hot and slick with sweat.

"... when I did _this_..."

He buried his fingers in his hair, closed his fist and pulled. Roughly.

Scorpius yelped in surprise and pain and also, undeniably, lust. He couldn't help but tilt his head back and expose his throat.

James Potter was _touching_ him.

Potter stepped close again suddenly. He pushed his body into Scorpius', making him feel just _how_ much more powerful he was. Scorpius felt profoundly that he was much taller, much older, much stronger than himself.

He felt helpless at his hands.

He shuddered. With ecstasy.

"Being at someone's mercy makes you hard," Potter all but growled into his ear and drove his hip and thigh against Scorpius' crotch. "Does it not?"

A bright lightning bolt of pleasure struck him, making his knees go weak and setting the middle of his body on fire from within. He wanted to correct him, wanted to say '_just at yours_', but that pressure against his erection, even though two layers of clothing, the sweet pain on his scalp and the sheer _closeness_ robbed him of his breath, and of his ability to speak and to think straight. All that came out was a moan.

"It was all a substitution game," James whispered breathlessly as if he had just run a sprint. "What you really wanted, you couldn't get, so you did it to me and lived it vicariously."

Long moments went by in which Scorpius didn't dare to move although he wanted nothing more on this earth than to grind against him. Their agitated breathing rang loudly through the room.

"That means I haven't really been the victim at all, doesn't it?" Potter whispered, still panting.

A small 'uhn'-sound escaped Scorpius' mouth when Potter readjusted his grip on his hair, giving it a little painful jerk.

"It means that _I_ was the master all along," he continued and tilted his hip a little, causing friction that made Scorpius gasp, "and that makes you the slave."

A peculiar thrill overcame him at hearing that. Feeble words of protest died in his throat when Potter suddenly tugged on the blindfold, taking it off, then took a step back again.

Scorpius blinked. His eyes felt wet. Potter's visual shape before him was blurry, but he himself, his presence, was distinct and overwhelmingly solid. Warm. Utterly alive. Strong. Stronger than him.

"You will obey me," he said.

Scorpius shivered, inside out from a place that was deep at the core, then felt himself nod shakily.

/

"You would sign up for on-call service for the entire time of Apprentice Potter's... Hogwarts-based apprenticeship," Professor Smith declared. His bored tone of voice made it clear that he had conducted this inquiry several times before already in other classes, to no avail. A result which, hearing the job description, wasn't all that surprising.

"Whenever my apprentice would require you, you are to be there, reliably and without a hitch to ensure optimal working conditions for Apprentice Potter. It would be your job to make brewing easier for him in any way."

What the class heard was: You'll sweep up after him. You'll sort and shelve the ingredients he used. You'll carry his books, you'll keep tables and check lists for him, you'll clean his cauldrons and provide a speckless arsenal of stirring spoons. And for all that, if you're lucky, you'll get our eternal gratitude. Pointedly annoyed looks were exchanged.

"The potions he has vowed to tackle are very demanding, mentally and physically, therefore, a little help for the menial tasks – continuous and dependable help, that is – would be quite appropriate."

When the class merely shot him and Potter, who stood beside him unperturbed and unmoving, dark glances, he cleared his throat and continued, "Naturally, the volunteer him- or herself would also benefit from such tasks. Observing the brewing process itself can be very educational and would surely reveal to you entirely new dimensions of potion-making..."

His feeble attempts at making the offer sound tempting went on for several more minutes, until he finally sighed, with a pointed side glance at Potter that said _I told you this was a waste of time, I told you your requirements were quite unreasonable, and anyway this will be the last I'll ever hear of this_, and said, "Well? Any takers for this... wonderful... opportunity?"

There was a moment of deafening silence.

Focussing intently on his desk before him, hand slightly shaking, Scorpius raised his arm.

/**TBC**_  
><em>

_How's that for a new and improved James Sirius Potter, eh?_


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_Whoo, thanks to TheEternalForever for following me! (That is such a weird thing to say/write, but I like it ^^. If only James were _that_ chill about being followed, we... probably wouldn't have this story and I wouldn't have anything to write about... Oh well.)_

_Now please enjoy chapter 3 in which we learn that there's no happy end without some despair..._

/

**Chapter 3**

/

Bagman noticed his raised hand and audibly muttered, "What the-?" which made everyone turn around.

"Are you insane, Malfoy? Put your hand down, for Mordred's sake," Bagman and Lawless both hissed at him. Bagman, sitting beside him on the double bench, actually looked like she was about to lunge for his arm, like a presidential bodyguard throwing himself onto the politician who was about to be assassinated.

But he didn't put it down.

_You will obey me._

"Mr Malfoy, you _are_ aware that this arrangement is considered to be _binding_?" Professor Smith asked, sounding oddly annoyed that someone had actually volunteered. As if he had been looking forward to delivering the actual _I told you so_ speech, or had made a bet with his apprentice and was about to lose, or was just plain jealous because he himself hadn't had a helper during his own apprentice days.

"Yes, Professor," Scorpius said with as much conviction as he could.

"For the next eight months at least. Maybe for the whole year."

"Yes, Professor," he repeated.

"And you have understood the details of it?" No feasible gain, great spans of lost time, no special treatment.

"Yes, Professor," he said for the third time. He glanced at Professor Smith to confirm.

Then at Potter, and quickly away.

Potter nodded at Professor Smith, his expression indecipherable, and retired through the side door near the teacher's desk, leaving the professor to begin his lesson. "Well, then," Smith said with a solemn nod of his own. Then, "Is there a problem, Miss Lawless? Mr Prince? No?", and finally ordered them to open the books at page 493.

The lesson, an exercise in tedium with an underlying current of unbearable tension of which he was the epicentre, crawled by. When, after hours – or maybe days? - the professor finally ended the lesson, Scorpius fled the scene.

Mariella, having run after him with long and angry strides and caught up in under a minute, just barely refrained from strangling him right there in the corridor. "The apprentice's _menial_, Malfoy, really!?" she all but screamed at him. "What on _earth_ were you thinking?"

He couldn't answer, and not for the fact that there were other people all around. Well, not directly _around_, since he had dashed out of the classroom, successfully outrunning everyone except Ella, but her voice probably carried through the entire dungeon corridor and up to the main staircase, involving half the Hogwarts student body into this conversation.

Even if they had been entirely alone, in an empty, silent, spell-warded room, he couldn't have explained it to her. Not even with all the dictionaries Madam Pince's library had to offer.

"I'm going to drop Runes and Care, and maybe Arithmancy," he mumbled in a vague response. "It'll all fit in my schedule just fine."

"That'd almost be good to hear, if you had come to that decision by the way of cold logic and common sense. Instead, you apparently reached it via a serious detour through Batshitville, Malfoy." It was quite remarkable how she managed to rage and spit at great volume while keeping up with him. Scorpius was almost running.

"You know, we agreed on study plans, like, three days ago-"

"-and I'm going to fulfil them exactly as planned," Scorpius retorted, annoyed that she doubted him already before anything at all had happened, even though he had been just about the most reliable pupil of house Slytherin for six years when it came to study groups and helping his schoolmates out.

To be fair, he had gone those six years – or five years and roughly ten months anyway – without James Potter in his head.

"No, you're not. You're going to spend the nights trying to catch up with the current syllabus and homework yourself because you're going to spend hours upon hours with _him_," she snorted angrily.

The way she emphasized 'him' made him shoot her a venomous look. "Watch your mouth, Lawless," he said quietly, after they had passed a group of fifth years that was coming their way.

"Watch your _brain_, Malfoy," she hissed back. "Do you think I don't see what this is about? You and your twisted obsession with that guy-"

"Mariella!" He stopped, whirled around and grabbed her by the arm.

"It's unhealthy, Malfoy!" she snapped and jerked her arm out of his grip right away. "You think you're in love with him or something which is sick enough by itself. But now you just throw yourself at him and agree to become his bloody _slave_." Scorpius flinched at that word. "Have some self-respect, for Mordred's sake. He won't reciprocate your feelings just because you fawn on him."

"That's not-" He fell silent as another group of fifth years headed to the classroom passed them. They were giving him side glances. "I'm not doing it because of that," he finished quietly.

"Then _why_?" Mariella crossed her arms before her chest. "What on earth were you thinking, if not _that_? Eh? Is it because of the _exceptional brewing experience_?"

He couldn't explain because he couldn't tell her. About what had happened in the trophy room.

Yesterday's meeting was still nightmarishly clear in his brain, replaying over and over before his mind's eye. He hadn't slept since then, so there was merely a deep tiredness to take the edge off the recollection now instead of a night of sleep that might have dulled the pain.

He remembered vividly the tension that had mounted and mounted until it became excitement, then arousal. He remembered the feathery touch of his hand against the side and back of his neck, and the way he had grabbed his hair. The way he had whispered into his ear, his hot breath tickling his earlobe. He remembered the wonderful feeling of slowly being undressed.

James Potter had touched him. Or that's what it had felt like.

"You will obey me," his voice echoed huskily through his skull.

Scorpius had nodded, tingling from head to toe with lust, thoughts swirling madly, anticipating more of his touch, more of his voice, wishing he would come back and press his body against his own again, now, harder, and then stay there until the stars burnt out.

"Good," he heard him say. The gravelly undertone made Scorpius swallow hard.

Potter's dark shape came closer again. He leaned down to speak into his ear, and said, "Because if you don't, I promise I will ruin you."

Immediately, all the heat turned clammy.

"What?" Scorpius croaked thinly.

His _own_ thoughts. His own words, echoing through time, rising out of a distant past when he was still convinced that his greatest desire was to see Potter gutted, to drag him from his pedestal.

Words from a time when he had been wrong about... everything.

"You heard me," Potter said airily. He turned away. A reading lamp he had placed on a middle shelf lit up when he yanked the switch, illuminating the room with warm orange light that was still garish in Scorpius' eyes after the darkness. "I don't think I need to explain the concept of blackmail to you, do I?"

Then, he started explaining in precise words and an almost detached tone of voice. He explained that he wouldn't have been able to do this last year because he hadn't known the real perpetrator then, and because he had been seventh year student, up to his ears in work for classes and fighting for the opportunity to become the Potions Master's apprentice. That his own life and future were now secure while Scorpius' were fragile things which could be devastated with a word – all the easier now that he, too, was legally of age. That he now had the power to keep the story contained even should he choose to report him, so that there was no threat to his integrity any more.

That the tables had turned.

Scorpius couldn't really listen. There was a high, shrill beep in his head as if from electrical feedback. Clumsily, he got his clothes in order again, failing at the zip four times because he couldn't properly grasp the tab. His fingers didn't cooperate.

"What a mess you are, Malfoy. Look at you," he heard someone say in the voice of James Potter. "Pathetic." And, "How on earth did you ever think I might go for something like _that_?"

Scorpius didn't reply. He couldn't help shaking like a leaf. The clasp of his belt buckle jingled.

Potter sighed, presumably at the miserable sight. "I told Smith I want someone to do the stupid work for me in order to fulfil my apprentice's schedule," he said. "Tomorrow, the Professor will graciously ask your class for a volunteer ready to pledge themselves non-stop through my entire apprentice's year here. No sane person would do that thankless job, of course, but fortunately _you_ will volunteer nonetheless."

He had considered contradicting him. He had thought about trying to plead with him on behalf of his already overflowing work-, tutoring-, study group- and Quidditch training schedule, and his slipping Transfiguration mark, and the ever-growing distance between his classmates and himself, and even on behalf of the pain in his chest that was about the size of a clenched fist, a sharp ache that grew explosively at the prospect of having to spend time near him. But when he had looked up and seen his eyes, hard and cold like two pieces of flint, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

To crown it all, a voice that sounded both like Mariella's and his own had rung out in his head, telling him that he'd had it coming all along and that this was justice and karma, that he deserved this. Sadly, because he wasn't stupid, he knew that this voice was completely right.

That didn't change the fact that he was hurting. Intimately, like he never had and didn't know how to bear. For a moment, something deep inside had bonded with James Potter. _James Potter had been touching him_. That feeling had twirled and woven and wrapped itself around his ribs like a vine, binding him to James and James to him and it had been so delicious and perfect. But then James had stepped back again, said those words and now those new, delicate fibres were being stretched and broken, fraying like ropes and tearing with a silent snap. He felt like he was bleeding. Absent-mindedly, he had felt for his chest, then checked whether his palm came back red.

"If you don't raise your hand tomorrow, I'm going to give you hell, understood?"

Scorpius hadn't understood _anything_ but nodded nonetheless.

James had huffed and then gone away, taking the lamp with him. Scorpius had been left behind in the darkness for he didn't know how long.

Standing in the corridor now, with Mariella glaring at him expectantly, indignantly, impatiently, he pressed his lips together. He couldn't tell her. It was still happening, inside. He was still bleeding.

Once upon a time, Mariella had told him that "where there's smoke, there's fire – or at least some sort of a smoking charm." Turned out that what he'd had with Sarah Halberman had been a smoking charm, a cheap, fleeting thing that had been carried away by the breeze. But James Potter – he was _fire_. He'd set himself alight with him, and for a desperately beautiful moment James had seemed to be stoking the flames.

But then the fire had turned against him and started biting and devouring him, leaving soot, ashes, ugly burn scars and feelings so chaotic and hurt that he couldn't even manage to talk about them, or even sort them out in his head. And soon, Potter would be raking and picking those ashes with every little owl summoning him to his side and every minute that he had to spend in his company. That was ironic, bittersweet and crueller than he could ever hope to make Mariella understand with mere words.

He shook his head at his friend and walked away.

Mariella supposedly watched him go. She didn't come after him this time.

/

/

Several long days passed. Scorpius handed control over to routines, going through the motions as inconspicuously as he could.

For a short moment one evening before falling asleep, he was almost hurt that none of his friends seemed to really notice, or to mind, that he wasn't himself, really. The autopilot could not keep up with the snark and the social exchanges that had made life and studying at Hogwarts bearable once. But after Bagman's protesting in that first Potion's lesson and Mariella confronting him in the hallway afterwards, no one seemed to give a shit. No one asked. No one made any mention of his now frequent silences, the lack of witty ripostes, the absence of interest in the new patterns of social interaction forming due to the new pupils, the monosyllabic responses, or of his falling asleep on his desk in History lesson. Not even his Quidditch team, fully staffed again after an exhausting try-out weekend, seemed to notice or mind his latent lack of anything that could be described as 'passion', or 'interest'.

In a dormitory full of boys he considered good friends and surrounded daily by people he had known, liked and trusted since they had been eleven years old, he felt lonely.

He turned around on his too-soft mattress and decided to brave it out. Brice Parkinson had done it in fifth grade – granted, not like _that_, not at all, but anyway – so he could do it, too.

Or at least that's what he thought until the Potions lesson that followed right after that night. Professor Smith began the lesson with the words, "Mr Malfoy, you are required this evening. Six thirty sharp."

Smith didn't mind that Scorpius didn't reply or show that he had heard in any way. His classmates glanced at him, one and all, with varying degrees of sceptical interest, pity and disgust.

He just hoped they weren't able to hear his heart all but galloping out of his chest.

James Potter had been invisible for the last two weeks. He hadn't been to any Potions lesson, hadn't been in the Great Hall during mealtimes, or in the library – where Scorpius liked to spend time by himself, invariably looking at that spot in aisle four he'd twice been sitting in to see if he was there – and wasn't seen in the corridors or on the Quidditch pitch, either. There had been moments during the previous fourteen days in which Scorpius had wondered whether he had just been a very elaborate hallucination and he was going mad.

But then, Friday evening came.

In defiance of Mariella, he had spend the two hours between his last class of the day – Charms – and six thirty sharp in the library, furiously working on finishing his homework. By himself.

It hadn't been enough. His Transfiguration essay was too short yet – when had that happened before? - and he hadn't managed to figure out the History assignment. His Potions homework was done but sloppier than he would have preferred and he desperately wanted to go over it again. He was in a bad mood.

And he was late.

And he was sweating in his robe, not just because he had been jogging all the way down to the dungeon, with a book bag weighing seven kilos under his arm.

Having arrived outside the potions classroom door, he gave himself a minute to collect himself, catch his breath and get his hair in order before finally knocking.

Professor Smith's muffled voice called him in. "Mr Malfoy. You're tardy," he said without looking up from an arrangement of slim test tubes on the teacher's desk. He appeared to be taking notes on every single one.

"My apolo-," Scorpius started, but was interrupted by Potter coming in through the side door.

"Save it," James said gruffly, then, to the Professor, "May I, Professor?"

"I would recommend this one," Professor Smith nodded toward a tube on the left, filled with a liquid a shade darker than the rest. Potter plucked it gently from the rack, then vanished the same way he had come. In a hurry.

Scorpius stared. He knew he wasn't supposed to be _more_ out of breath again now than just before knocking.

"Whatever are you waiting for, Mr Malfoy?" Smith glanced at him. "Should I tell my apprentice that you changed your mind last minute?" It sounded very much like he expected it.

"No," Scorpius replied, a little too quickly, and added, "Professor."

"Then you should get to work," he said after a little pause and focussed on the test tubes again, all but forgetting about Scorpius.

With a silent sigh, he followed Potter through the side door.

As a normal student, he had never been in the bowels of the dungeons before. As should have been expected, the classroom itself was merely the antechamber, with a network of bigger and smaller rooms – some of them functional as private quarters featuring a normal kitchen smelling of coffee, some used as specialized libraries and filled from floor to ceiling with books, some wide and empty with no obvious function – stretched behind it. Scorpius could see several of these rooms through slightly-open doors that branched out from the low-ceilinged hallway he was stepping through. On mere instinct, he followed it all the way to the end.

The room he found Potter in was small, cramped even, although the only piece of furniture in it was a low, rickety-looking desk with a medium-sized copper cauldron on top. All around him and the desk, potion-making equipment was strewn about in a vaguely organised chaos – Erlenmeyer flasks to one side, stirring spoons to the other, jars with ingredients to this, buckets with coals to that, weighing scale made of brass, thimble measure, pipettes, water level, astrolabes, balls of multicoloured wool, two pairs of silver compasses, a sack of green potatoes, an oversized alarm clock that went backwards, heaps of books, parchment, two inkwells and various other clutter, some of whose purposes Scorpius could only guess, grouped together by type and size all around the room. A narrow, clear path lead through the chaos to the door. The walls were painted dark, which made the room feel even smaller than it was. Upon further inspection, Scorpius noticed scribblings on them, made with white chalk. There was only a small, rectangular window that almost touched the ceiling – more of a vent through which smoke could escape.

"Get me another one of the tubes," Potter suddenly said. Scorpius flinched. He hadn't thought that James had noticed him coming in.

"Another tube, Malfoy. Now!" he demanded, stirring whatever was inside the cauldron urgently. The kettle belched a cloud of dark grey smoke – never a good sign.

Scorpius let his book bag slide from his shoulder and onto the floor, then hurried and fetched Potter another test tube full of dark blue liquid from Professor Smith's desk. Potter almost ripped it from his hand and threw it – glass and all – into the cauldron. Another cloud of smoke, but white this time and smelling strongly of cinnamon. Not necessarily a better sign but at least nothing exploded.

Potter didn't stop to thank him. Indeed he didn't say a single word for hours and just... worked.

Thus began Scorpius' serfdom. It consisted of long periods of waiting and watching Potter's back – not in the figurative but the literal sense – and trying his hardest not to be in the way because it was obvious that delays and mistakes would potentially have dire consequences.

Mostly, James seemed to ignore him or simply forget that he was there, until he suddenly remembered him and barked an order or two which Scorpius then hurried to follow. Fetch this. Dispose of that. Peel this. Hand me that.

There was no talking. Scorpius felt like a piece of the scattered equipment, used in a hurry and put on hold, used again and put on hold again, yet somehow... _invisible_ and never looked at the entire time. Standing there, his feet and calves starting to hurt after two hours, and silently regarding James Potter's bent back, he wondered whether he was just imagining things or if there really was some sort of irony in that, some cosmic, fateful symmetry, history repeating itself with delicate touch of gleefulness. Small room, low ceiling, him serving Potter, Potter not looking at him... He had the strong feeling that some shrewd deity was currently laughing their ass off at his expense.

For two weeks, Professor Smith let him know every second day that he was "required", either in Potions class or via owl. He showed up – five minutes earlier than agreed every time, on principle, even if no one remarked on it -, went through into the brewing chamber, took Potter's orders for two or three hours, and was dismissed with a backhanded wave when he asked.

Against all odds, an almost comfortable routine developed.

Watching Potter work was strangely not-boring. Potter was like a professional piano player whilst Scorpius was merely an amateur himself – the incredible elegance and efficiency of his work was obvious, its beauty striking, whereas the larger portion of his activities remained shrouded in mystery to him. As good as Scorpius was in Potions, what Potter was doing was way, way out of his league. A whole week into watching him, he still had only a very faint idea exactly what the effect of the potion he was brewing might be. Something psychoactive, judging by the amount of moondew he was adding, but what exactly – he had no clue.

Of course he never dared to break his concentration with stupid questions. So he contented himself with standing there, near the door, quietly as a butler, looking at either the scribblings on the walls – Potter's calculations, but not a clue how they worked, way too many abbreviations and symbols – or at Potter's back.

Seeing Potter, even if only from behind, brought him a sort of mild, yet undeniable satisfaction. His back was strong and wide. It was- It was _good_ to look at. Nice, even. It started to feature in Scorpius' dreams which were long and deep and immediately forgotten, making for very restful sleep and giving Scorpius the feeling that, finally, things were sorted out, that the wound was scabbing and starting to fade.

That he had his life back in order. For good.

/**TBC**

_...and also, unfortunately, that despair doesn't necessarily lead to happy ends, or to anything at all.  
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_Be kind, write me a review, no matter how short :)_


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_Thanks to WildEerin and ihrtryoma for following this story! To the guest who left me a review: Thank you! I have to confess that I'm a bit of a sucker for happy endings, so chances are generally good ^^; As to things getting worse... sweet things taste sweeter when you eat some bitterness before :)_

_Now, on to chapter 4! Enjoy!_

/

**Chapter 4  
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/

Professor Smith said nothing during the entirety of the third week, and there were no owls or summons of any kind. Scorpius only barely bit back his questions when he became aware of Mariella watching him out of the corner of her eye in Potions lesson.

That Saturday afternoon found Scorpius in the library, on the table in the fourth aisle. Being a seventh year student now, he kept his book bag and a duffel bag full of Quidditch equipment on the other two chairs and no one, not even Madam Pince, said anything about it. Undisturbed, he completed his assignments for five out of six subjects and was just working on the last one – Herbology, which he had staved off as long as he could – when someone cleared his throat in front of him, loudly enough for him to hear it even through his earplugs.

Looking up, he couldn't bite back a "Hey, do you believe in cosmic irony or the circularity of history?" Same aisle, same table, same day of the week, even the same colour of earplugs. Coincidence? Unlikely.

His question merely earned him a long, hard stare and a "What are you talking about?" from Potter.

"Never mind," he sighed. "Did you want to use this table?"

Again, Potter stared darkly, as if he were trying and failing to discern whether he was mocking him. "N- No, I... No, I don't want to use this table."

They looked at each other - Scorpius looked at Potter, in any way, while Potter looked at a spot on the wall just above Scorpius' head - and were silent.

"Well?" Scropius prompted, drawling the word, after the silence had stretched long enough to become uncomfortable. "What is it, then?"

James regained his composure even though Scorpius couldn't guess why he would've lost it in the first place. "The initial survived," he said. When Scorpius merely blinked quizzically, he explained, "The first potion of an apprenticeship. The one that decides whether the apprentice can go on and at which level. Sort of like an entrance and evaluation exam. It was successful. I passed."

"Congratulations," Scorpius said, more by reflex than anything, slightly confused about how he was supposed to react. Was he supposed to be happy for him? He sort of was. Proud, even, given that he had got glimpses of how hard he had worked for it although that was entirely odd, really.

But on the other hand – he hadn't realised that Potter's failure could have potentially meant the end of the apprenticeship and therefore of his own unfreedom So logically, he should be angry and annoyed that it hadn't worked out for himself that way. Except that he wasn't. He frowned to himself at that.

"Thank you," Potter replied, equally reflexively.

Another strange pause.

"I want to start with several smaller projects today," James eventually said, clearing his throat again and straightening his shoulders, "and would- uh, require your assistance."

Scorpius sighed, flipping his Herbology tome shut with a dull bang. "It's not like I have a choice, is it?" he asked without expecting an answer.

For some reason, Potter's eyes narrowed and his expression darkened at his words, but he didn't say anything else.

Scorpius packed his stuff under his wordless gaze and then followed him out of the library. As he walked out, he stonily ignored the look Constance Bagman was giving him from her table near the window.

/

"What was it?" he asked after walking next to and slightly behind Potter for several minutes. It was annoyingly difficult to keep up with him and his longer legs. He constantly felt like he was being shaken off. Outpaced. "Your initial? The potion you made?"

"Dreamless Sleep," he answered. "Slightly more potent, more volatile and hard to control, but more efficient to make, with a longer shelf-life, too. Bit cheaper, all in all." It didn't sound at all like that was all he had to say on the subject. On the contrary, Scorpius all but expected him into a full-hour lecture on how this new and improved potion was made, and how nifty it all was. But nothing else came.

"Wow," Scorpius said after waiting for him to go on a second or two. He was honestly taken aback. Potions that influenced the psyche in that way were the potion-making equivalent of advanced rocket science. The required ingredients were almost always very dangerous or mindblowingly expensive or both. Only a quarter of a chapter was devoted to those in the seventh year Potions textbook, a short passage of introductory reading that mostly told the students to hold their horses and go back to brewing more basic stuff before anyone got seriously hurt. "That's, uhm. That's impressive."

Again, James stayed silent. Scorpius imagined that he smiled a little.

"Was it sampled already?" Sampling – the administration of the potion to a test subject by a certified person who knew its intended effects, symptoms, results or consequences, and the subsequent comparison to a previously certified batch of the same potion – was basically the ultimate quality test for a potion. It separated 'brew-ups' from actual 'potions'. The Ministry had its own subdepartment for sampling potions that would be used by Ministry staff. His father had had business with them because of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

"Yes, it was, a week ago," Potter replied, and then added – mumbling, as if self-conscious about his achievements -, "Madam Pomfrey administered it to me, actually."

"You sampled it _yourself_?" Scorpius asked, surprised. "Isn't that dangerous, though? How was it like?"

"Uh, dreamless," Potter said. "Restful. Exactly like it was supposed to be."

"Wow," he repeated sincerely, "that's... quite awesome."

He imagined another mild smile on his face.

There was a short silence. They descended into the subterranean part of the castle, Potter taking two steps at a time, obviously very familiar with every stair and stone already.

"Constance Bagman glared daggers at you," Potter suddenly remarked, somehow managing to sound interested and casual at the same time. Politely curious, like Shrew's parents when they were over at the Manor and inquired after Scorpius' grades by mentioning Shrew's – just less stilted.

"Well, uh," Scorpius uttered. _Everyone is just _that_ thrilled about me being your dumb waiter._ "I'm supposed to lead a Potions study group in two hours." The first of the year, to be exact, precisely how they had planned it on the Hogwarts Express, in light of the upcoming first exams. _That should be interesting._ "It's her way of expressing joyful anticipation," he mumbled.

Potter turned his head as if he wanted to give him a look out of the corner of his eye, but he really only greeted Professor Longbottom who was coming their way with two large empty wicker baskets under his arms and a plastic bucket full of assorted leaves in his hand.

They made the rest of the way to the Potions classroom in silence. Despite it being Saturday and wonderfully sunny outside, Professor Smith was sitting on the teacher's desk at its front, buried in parchments that looked like students' essays, which probably explained the tall glass of what was probably red wine and his continuous, disgruntled murmuring. Neither James nor Scorpius tried to catch his attention, so they passed straight through the side door, all but on tiptoes.

This time, James led the way into another corridor and then up a narrow, steep and long flight of stairs into a vastly bigger room than the first. It housed five big tables, each one with at least one cauldron on it, plus an array of raw ingredients and instruments, plus two large blackboards, a mattress in the corner by the door, and there was still room to spare. The whole room was illuminated by a large, round domed roof light that made Scorpius wonder exactly how long that staircase had been. It really didn't add up at all, architecturally – but this was Hogwarts, so he supposed that it didn't necessarily _have_ to.

"One big kettle of vanilla calming draught," Potter began by pointing to the table on the far left, "one kettle of vanilla Pepper-up, a batch of Venecian style burn-healing paste, the stronger stuff, hiccoughing solution that also works properly against the latest version of Weasley's HicCups, and some extra potent herbicide for Professor Longbottom and his geranium." He gestured toward the last table that held a tiny, coppery kettle. "And that one is a small experimental batch of wolfsbane. I want to make that more potent, too." He eyed him with a raised brow. "Got that?"

"Yes," Scorpius said, only barely suppressing a snide 'Master' at the end there. Seven kettles, seven potions. Not fantastically hard to get.

"You'll be preparing the ingredients, and cleaning up the leftovers, to keep it tidy." And with that, he turned toward the wolfsbane cauldron and didn't turn back around for the next hour. When he finally did, he went from one table to the next, adding the ingredients Scorpius had prepared according to the formula, muttering to himself quietly, stirring sometimes and poking the fires underneath the kettles sometimes, but not saying another word to him.

Scorpius hurried to cut, peel, slice, cube, knead, weigh, squeeze and sift everything Potter would need, in the order of his needing them. Twice he had to run down to the ingredients closet – huffing and puffing and cursing that bloody stairway which seemed to get longer and steeper each time. Once, he had to go get a mop to wipe up spilled puffapod juice that left a dark brown stain stinking of vinegar on the plain concrete floor. The cutting, scraps and empty receptacles were collected neatly next to or under each table, separated painstakingly to avoid cross reactions – each table even had its own broom to sweep up with.

All in all, Scorpius was grimy, sweaty and out of breath very soon, his fingernails were pitch black, his hands stained greenish with snargaluff sap, and his nose itched like the devil.

But it was good. The work, the task, not dumb or demeaning at all.

The company, even, silent and unappreciative as it was.

It was, unexpectedly, _fun_. Scorpius didn't even know why. It was as satisfying as ticking off a to-do-list, and as challenging as conducting seven Quidditch players across a pitch.

Also, watching Potter brew was intriguing. Whenever he had a free second, he would glance at the tables of reaction equations Potter had written for the hiccoughing solution which were laid out right next to the cauldron, endless, neat columns of words, numbers and symbols he didn't understand although it almost _felt_ like he could. He understood enough to know that it was complicated and elegant and genius.

He could see Potter's hands moving about, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His motions looked so fluid and perfect. He never once faltered or paused.

_I like this._ The finally gave in to the urge and scratched his nose and regretted it instantly. His eyes began to water. He cursed softly.

The rainbow-coloured fumes from said hiccoughing solution that smelled like caramel and cream might have had something to do with it as well, he reflected.

In any case, he felt like being dunked in cold water when Potter suddenly said, "Time's up, Malfoy. Go."

That was a first. Normally, he asked Potter, after half an hour of not doing anything and standing around like an idiot, whether he could leave. Potter would flinch a little, clearly having forgotten all about him, grunt a 'yes yes' and make a shooing motion with his hand over his shoulder, and that was that.

Being sent away like this felt wrong. Disappointing.

Scorpius put down the decanter of onion juice he had just been filling. "But I'm not done," he said. With the exception of the hiccoughing solution which was supposed to be belching rainbow-coloured, caramel-flavoured steam for the next ten hours at least to break down the main active ingredient properly, each of the cauldrons would need addition soon, or the base potion would become useless, or worse, and the necessary ingredients weren't properly prepared yet.

"I'll handle it," Potter said over his shoulder. He was working with some sort of strainer, sieving octopus powder maybe. Scorpius had never heard of adding something like octopus powder to wolfsbane, but then again, he had said that the kettle was experimental.

"How?" he asked, not sure why he wasn't on his way yet, why his feet didn't want to get him out the door. "You're going to have to attend three kettles and cut up that bat spleen simultaneously in about ten minutes, you know that, yes?"

"I said I'll handle it." He stressed the words as if Scorpius was a somewhat slow child. Then he added, "You have a study group to attend and friends to meet. If you leave now, you'll make it to the library in time."

For some reason, Scorpius bristled at that. "They can wait. This can not," he said. It came out much sharper than was warranted.

Potter whipped the sieve against the side of the table with great force, beating out the powder residue. It rained to the floor with a hiss. "I'm not going to make you late, Malfoy. It's not polite to your friends."

Scorpius made a quiet, rude noise. "Who cares? They're prepared to wait. They know that I'm here right now, acting as your servant."

"What rubbish," Potter murmured, but Scorpius caught it. Hearing it made him, of all things, angry.

"Rubbish?" he asked, voice pointed like a needle. "What, that I'm your servant? Why? Isn't that exactly what I am?"

James turned his head and stared at him, frowning. His mouth opened, then closed again as if he didn't know what to say or how to say it. It infuriated Scorpius even further. _At least tell me something like 'Yes, you're my servant, now do as I tell you', damn it, you coward._

"You blackmailed me into being your...," Scorpius pushed the word out, "your personal slave, Potter. You actually said so yourself." He opened his hands, as if to say _Time to admit it_. "Master and slave? Does that ring a bell?"

Potter looked at him as if he had struck him in the face. "That... That was-" he spluttered. Redness crept onto his cheeks and he turned away quickly, but not quickly enough for Scorpius not to notice. "When I said that, I was referring to... _before_."

_You mean when we met in the trophy room that last time_, Scorpius thought but did not say. A short flash of memory crawled over his skin, tingling, making him shift in his clothes. _That time I thought you were touching me._

"You're here for reparations. You _owe_ me," Potter explained frantically. "That doesn't mean that I _own_ you. It's _different_."

"So if I chose to stop being your 'assistant'," he air quoted "right this moment, if I just walked out and didn't come back, you wouldn't... you wouldn't tell what I did? You wouldn't... _ruin_ me?" He was tempted to ask whether he had forgotten his own words already- or had he somehow meant something different when saying them? What else could he possibly have meant, though?

And just like that, Scorpius felt that they had come to a crossroads. Which was doubly strange because he hadn't expected their – affiliation? connection? quasi-contractual business relationship? - to move at all, ever. After weeks of doing the same thing over and over in the same manner and only communicating one way and in imperatives, he had assumed their – whatever it was – to be completely stationary and inert.

And yet... here they were, forcedly redefining _it_.

_What am I? To you? Exactly?_

James didn't answer the question. Obviously frustrated, he turned his back and started cleaning the powder sieve with what looked like a crocheting needle, stabbing and jerking vigorously.

If it had been anyone else, Scorpius would have assumed that the silence was just an unspoken admission, a refusal to embarrass themselves by betraying, verbally, their base, malicious intent.

But this wasn't anyone else, it was James Sirius Potter. He was clearly appalled by the idea of physically _owning_ him, and maybe he had only just realised that that's what he had been doing, dangling the threat of exposure over his head that day in the trophy room.

Interestingly, though, he didn't deny it, either.

He didn't set him free and send him on his way.

Scorpius meant to ask 'Do I need to stay?' - meaning not just _now_, but in general, as an unpaid, uncredited and unappreciated measly assistant to the Apprentice – but what came out of his mouth in the end was, "Do you want me to stay?"

Big difference. He felt it, in his chest. For a moment, the entire room seemed to be holding its breath, kettles included.

James declined to answer. Again.

After minutes of working on his simmering wolfsbane-to-be, he quietly said, "Get me another vial of aconite fluid, please. Whitened, at least 80%."

Scorpius exhaled deeply. Then, he took the narrow steps to get him the vial, huffed and puffed and swore his way back up the stairway with burning thighs and calves, then cut up the aforementioned bat spleen, peeled half a dozen ashwinder eggs, counted out the right amount of belladonna petals, grated the ginger and the erumpent horn and counted twenty three drops of aqua vitae into a test tube.

He was twenty minutes late to the study group and his hands smelled of snargaluff and were slowly getting a dark purple hue around his fingernails. People leaned away from him, giving him a clear indicator of exactly how bad his body odour was.

Although they gave him dark looks that spoke volumes, none of his fellow Slytherins said a word about any of it.

/**TBC**

_Baby steps, people. Baby steps._

_As always, reviews are very appreciated!_


	5. Chapter 5

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_To FlowerSpaceship: Thank for your enthusiastic review on Calor! Reading all that in one day is a pretty impressive feat, wow - I'm not sure that _I_ could do that and I freaking wrote it o.ô I actually don't really know how to write fluffy romance. I prefer my romance kinky yet sexually unsatisfactory, fraught with feelings of guilt, and psychologically dubious - you know, just like real life :D Glad that you still liked it! I hope you're not regretting starting to read an ongoing story. If you are, you could come back on the evening of September 29th. Everything will be uploaded by then.  
>Re:Review ch 4: "I don't understand why Scorpius isn't telling Mariella the truth though." Because, like other 17-year-olds, Scorpius doesn't know how to talk about feelings, especially not when they're that enormous ^^. Also, because Mariella doesn't like talking about this stuff. He doesn't want to try her patience and possibly reveal his "condition" to the others. Bascially, he doesn't have a better option than to do as he is told.<br>"I was somewhat apprehensive of this whole master-slave situation..." So was James, actually ^^; After getting last year out of his system (i.e. telling himself that it was aaaall different, to Scorpius' cost) in that trophy room, he's actually pretty reluctant... eh, you'll see. :) Thank you for the reviews, darling!  
><em>

_Okay, now on to chapter 5! One step forward..._

/

**Chapter 5**

/

In the next week – test week, no less – Scorpius spent at least an hour each day in the dungeon, helping Potter brew up his marathon of basic hospital wing potions while Potter himself loomed mostly over his copper kettle at the far end of the room. Indeed, he saw him from the front more often during breakfast in the Great Hall than during their extended one-on-one time in the dungeon.

One morning, when all the students had been urged to the Great Hall by their prefects and the entire staff had suspiciously gathered at the head table without exception – including, as Scorpius quickly noticed, the Potion Master's apprentice, hidden next to and slightly behind Professor Smith, just like before - Professor McGonagall introduced Ms Alverdine Sullivan.

"Ms Sullivan will eventually substitute for me in January when, as you all know, my presence will be required at the Ministry in London. Until then, she will occasionally accompany me in Transfiguration lesson."

Ms Alverdine Sullivan could not have been much older than 25. Her hair was very fair and very pretty, her eyes were very green and very pretty - everything about her was very pretty and very likeable, Scorpius thought.

At least until she sat down at the far end of the teachers' table. Next to Potter. Promptly leaning towards him to talk, brushing her hair over her ear and all.

It was even harder now to not constantly turn around and look at them since Mariella practically denied all help, but he somehow managed, with an iron will and a grim look on his face.

The first test phase of the year had come and gone, and students and teachers grumbled about the tests and about one another. It was, Scorpius noted, not all that different from sixth year, except maybe in the acrimony of the grumbling.

In this case, Prince and Lawless grumbled with one another, at one another, and in unison about Professor Smith who, shitty teacher that he was, had decided to test them on two potions they had never dealt with directly, and then announced that the marks for the test would influence the final marks.

The general discontent was so great that people were still audibly complaining while taking their seats the next lesson in the potions dungeon, knowing full well - and ignoring the fact - that Professor Smith, like a sneaky agent of some dark, nefarious organisation, was certainly within earshot somewhere, ready to pick up these comments and fire them back at those who had uttered them in the form of extensive additional homework assignments.

The whole class fell silent as one when James Sirius Potter stepped through the side door instead and took the place at the teacher's desk. Scorpius, studiously ignoring Mariella's side-glancing from the other table, noted that it looked like he had been doing that for years. Like he owned the place.

"Welcome, everyone," he said, looking from face to face without lingering anywhere, with a voice that Scorpius recognised as his Quidditch pitch voice, adjusted to dungeon classroom acoustics. "As you can probably tell, I'm not Professor Smith. I'm just his lowly apprentice who, at this point, sadly does not have a say in the matter of tests, evaluations, marks and the rest, so it'd be pointless to complain to _me_ about it."

He raised an eyebrow in Mariella's direction.

Then he continued, "I did have a look at your tests, though, and based on your most frequent problems and errors, I'd like to make today's lesson a refresher course, just to make clearer to you some of the basic principles of potion-making which most of you seem to have forgotten about, sometime during the last five years, or- maybe- never consciously knew in the first place. You'll need two cauldrons per table, anything between size 2 and 4 is fine for either..."

The lesson progressed in a flurry of well-coordinated action, with one of the cauldrons being used for what Potter called "assessing and experimenting" and the other for fixed results. Potter had picked a relatively easy-to-make sore throat potion from the fourth year's textbook's addendum whose recipe nonetheless incorporated six of the seventeen basic principles, plus four more that could be extrapolated without difficulty. The extra cauldron served as a reminder to look out for the active ingredients and to clarify what 'variations' and 'bases' were, something Scorpius had always had a hard time explaining to his fellow Slytherins during group homework or study groups.

Scorpius knew that he probably could have brewed that potion with his eyes closed, but going through each step carefully and rethinking the greater pattern behind it, seeing how the bigger picture made sense, still made it feel like a very valuable lesson.

That – and seeing Mariella, hands in the air, hopping up and down on the balls of her feet when her and Prince's potion started having the correct hue and consistency. In seven years of Potions classes, with the exception of that one time that Glee Syrup had exploded, he had never once seen her smile or laugh.

And, probably, seeing Potter in his element like that. It was like he had been born to teach, to flit from one table to the next dropping bits of good advice and encouragement everywhere, to ask questions with his loud, steady voice, and to make surprisingly simple and intelligible panels on a chalkboard. He looked so effortless. He looked like he genuinely had fun. It made him suppress a smile.

"Okay, everyone," Potter said as he returned to the teacher's desk after making his last round through the room, correcting and commenting where needed – and therefore passing right by Scorpius' and Constance's table throughout the lesson. "Most of you have successfully finished the potion by now and all of you have gone through the brewing steps I wanted you to go through. Well done."

He clapped his hands twice, like he used to during Quidditch practice with his team. When Professor Smith did this, it always sounded patronising.

"I hope you'll never forget that, so long as you keep the active ingredients and their properties in mind at all times, your equation can vary on both sides and still come out right in the end. Or at least not wrong. Any last-minute questions?" He waited a beat, but nobody spoke up. "Good. Consider yourselves dismissed, then. Please clean up after yourselves."

The class broke out in discussion and got generally noisy so Scorpius didn't notice him until Potter suddenly stood beside him, touching his shoulder to get his attention. He only flinched a little.

"Would you mind inventorying for me on this one?" he asked. "You know your way through the closet better than me by now. There are also some leftovers from the third years before on the stopover table that need to be shelved."

Scorpius nodded and mumbled something like 'Yes, sure' or maybe 'Yes, Sir', awkwardly trying not to turn his face to him because if he did their faces would be really close and that would be-

James wasn't quite done, though. "When you're done, go up to the brewing room, please." Without waiting for an answer, he walked away, weaving through the chaos of students and tables, and vanished through the side door.

Scorpius marvelled at how nothing he said ever seemed to be exactly one thing. Just like that comment about Constance's glare in the library had been simultaneously curious and disinterested, this last sentence of his was not quite an order, not quite a plea, not quite a request, not quite a suggestion, not quite a plain statement, but all of them wrapped in one ambiguous unit of speech.

Faintly, he wondered whether the only way to ever get him to express his feelings clearly and to speak his mind was to tie him to a bookshelf and suck him off.

"Does messieur apprentice _require_ you?" Mariella shoved him with her hip, breaking his concentration and his short trip down memory lane.

"Shut your mouth, Lawless," he mumbled without any heat. Was it possible to _will_ one's ears into_ not_ going red?

"Take your own advice, m'lord Malfoy. You were drooling a little," she said, pointing with her index finger at the corner of her own mouth and going, "right there." _The entire lesson_, he heard her add in his head. _It got real bad every time he turned around and stretched like he did to reach the top of the chalkboard..._

Then she shoved him again, chuckling under her breath like a villainess, and proceeded to clean up her and Prince's work table, carrying cauldrons and utensils back to their respective places.

He gave Mariella a lopsided grin which she returned, and weeks of awkwardness were noticeably at an end, or at least in remission. A small weight seemed to leave his mind. He breathed deeply, once.

Finally, he went to do the ingredients closet inventory, which was very easy now that he practically knew the thing like the back of his hand. After that, he walked up the hellish staircase, which seemed shorter and easier to climb for some reason as if he was just a bit lighter on his feet today, to join Potter in the brewing room at the end of it.

Just as he had stated he would, or maybe _asked_, or possibly _requested_, or perhaps _ordered_ him to do.

/

"That was a really good lesson," he dropped into a prolonged but not quite uncomfortable silence. When he had come into the room half an hour ago, Potter had stood there bent over a very long parchment that rolled over the edge and curled underneath his wolfsbane table, mumbling to himself and furiously scribbling on said parchment with a quill. He hadn't turned around or looked up since then.

James made a 'hrm'-sound in reply.

"Even Mariella almost appreciated it. Not that she'd ever admit it."

Another 'hrm'.

"If we were to vote on it, I'm pretty sure everyone would want you to substitute for Smith forever."

'Hrm hrm' this time.

"Where is he, anyway? And am I allowed to stir this?" He threw a look at the blood-replenishing potion that was currently brewing happily in one of the eight kettles he had to supervise, except that it was developing a greenish skin Scorpius was certain didn't belong there.

While Potter went 'hmmm', Scorpius decided to rather cost Potter apprenticeship points than deal with a kettle spewing boiling potion everywhere. He stirred, careful about going anti-clockwise.

"Also, Brice Parkinson grew a pair of cloven hooves this morning," he said casually, "and Tiffany Collins has decided to drop out of Hogwarts, move to Minnesota, have a big house, two kids, three bathrooms, a garden big enough for a cow and open a yoga studio. Plus, your hair is turning purple and it looks really fetch."

Potter went 'hrm'.

A whole minute or two went by. Scorpius carefully sifted the skin out of the cauldron and added half a glass of water for good measure.

Eventually, James sighed and put down the quill. "You know, just because I don't answer, doesn't mean I don't listen."

Scorpius lifted an eyebrow and almost asked, "It doesn't? Does that mean that, just because you're not looking at someone, doesn't mean that you don't _see _him?" But the words didn't quite make it.

Rolling up the parchment with brisk motions, Potter went on, "In order of mentioning: Thank you. That's great. That's the reason Hogwarts doesn't have student committees or give the students votes, because they would screw it all up. He's on business for S.I.M.M.E.R., not that it's any of yours, and also, it's still _Professor_ Smith to you. Technically no, but it's too late now. And lastly, don't breathe in the fumes from the blood replenishing potion, please." He breathed out with a huff. "And stop trying to make 'fetch' happen."

Scorpius laughed. He couldn't help it.

He imagined a pleased smirk on Potter's face.

"Wow," he said after he had the giggling under control, although the grin was still there. "That was the most words I have ever heard you speak in one go." _It was nice. You should to it more often._

"Words tend to confuse people," James replied, clearly somewhat more cryptically than he had really intended. Scorpius barely had time to grimace and think '_Isn't _that_ the bloody truth_', before he hastily added, "Pass me two porcupine quills, please. There should be some for the drowsiness draught. I want to try something."

Scorpius took two quills out of the basket Potter had indicated. Potter started making shavings off one of them with a big Swiss knife.

"Did you see my test, too?" Scorpius asked. He lingered near the wolfsbane table a moment, watching Potter's profile and his hands. Unsurprisingly, he was very skilful. "When you looked through our tests, I mean?"

"Sure," he said, but nothing more.

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "Well? How'd I do?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you," he answered lightly. He turned the knife over with a swift flick.

"Oh, come on."

"I'm not allowed, Malfoy." With some well-applied brute force, he broke off the tip of the quill he was working on. "You'll get them back next week, I imagine."

"But did I do well?" he asked again, returning to the problematic blood replenishing potion. It was throwing bubbles now which were spewing bubbles as they burst. Scorpius quickly stirred.

"I'm not allowed-"

"Come _on_, now, Potter. You must be allowed to tell me whether I did okay or not, at least?" He pouted even though Potter couldn't see it with his back still turned. He took away some of the twigs underneath the boiling kettle to reduce the heat and stomped them out under his heel.

Potter clicked his tongue, then sighed. "Potions is your strongest subject. You already know that you did _okay._"

For a moment, the bubbling of the cauldron and the soft scraping noise the quill made as Potter peeled it with his knife were the only sounds.

"Uh-huh." Scorpius dipped his hands into the water pail to wash soot off his palms and ventured, "Better than okay, maybe?"

Potter laughed.

Well, he blew air through his nose, which Scorpius noted down as a major accomplishment nonetheless.

"Get the me grater from downstairs," he merely replied, scraping up the strips of porcupine quill on his cutting board. "Or the rasp, if the grater's still soaking."

"And when I come back, you will tell me how I did in the test?" Scorpius rubbed his hands dry on his thighs.

At that, Potter actually glanced behind himself. Another accomplishment.

"Just get me the grater, man," he said, then shook his head and tsk'ed when Scorpius had left.

Scorpius may or may not have skipped down the stairs.

/**TBC**

_That last bit, that dialogue happened by accident. I wrote it for fun one night and didn't even mean to include it here, but then it happened to fit. I know it's twee. I still kinda like it.  
>Also: Yes, James watched Mean Girls. Lily Luna forced him to. She and Albus are quoting from it all the time, which drives poor James completely nuts. Did anyone write this one-shot already?<br>_

_Tomorrow I'm going to upload two chapters at once! Just so you know. Be prepared. (... for the coup of the century... *cough*)_


	6. Chapter 6

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_To Olive: Thank you for your review! I'm glad my story brightens your day :) Also: Good thing people still get these references. I've recently met a bunch of teenagers who had never heard of the movie and it just made me so, so sad. Like, what is it their parents are even doing?_

_And thanks to ihrtryoma for reviewing!_

_Let's get to the next chapters now. Remember how we took a (skipping) step forward in the last one...?  
><em>

/

**Chapter 6**

/

"... and McCarthy just went _nuts_, nuts I tell you. Threw a dancing jinx around, trying to hit her, but hit Flitwick instead-"

Shrew's tale of a certain Charms lesson caused much more amusement than it should have, which undoubtedly had to do with the tankards of firewhiskey in everyone's hands. The narrator himself wasn't seventeen yet for another three weeks, so they had opted for the old place on the logs near the Shrieking Shack again. This time, there were two kegs of whiskey, because in addition to what Shrew had dubbed 'the original five', there were Brice Parkinson, his even more annoying twin sister Briony, her slightly less annoying Ravenclaw friend Emma Bell, and Constance's hopefully-soon-to-be boyfriend Alfie Ashton, a Ravenclaw who was only in fifth year but already at least a head taller than all the other boys in the round and built like a wardrobe.

Also, this time, there would be no sighting of James Potter and Sarah Halberman walking together like two lovers on the boulevard. Scorpius sipped his whiskey and felt its warmth in his belly, being content with exactly where he was right now.

"You know, I get it now. A little. I think," Mariella suddenly murmured to him while the others were still raptly listening to Shrew. He was just getting started on his Flitwick-under-Tarantallegra- impersonation. Briony Parkinson was already honking with laughter.

"Get what?" Scorpius asked, muttering as well although he didn't know why yet.

"Him," she said. When he looked nonplussed, she added, "You know, _him_. You and him."

He nodded slightly, just to let her know that he knew who she was talking about, and nipped on his drink again. The warmth got several degrees warmer.

"I'm not drunk yet, you know?" Mariella slapped his leg in a _Don't you dare ignore me_-fashion. "I'm serious. I think I get it."

Scorpius sighed. He doubted it – both of her statements, actually, given that he had seen a full glass of firewhiskey disappear down her stomach already, and that was only when he'd been looking. Then again, that whole thing with _him_ seemed to be one of those things you only had a chance of 'getting' at all when drunk. So maybe it was worth a shot to get a load of slightly stocious Mariella's wisdom. "What is it, then?"

"It's something I observed during The Lesson," she said philosophically, referring to the one potions lesson Potter had given with audible capital letters. "You know, how he moves, and talks, and stuff he says and how he says it."

He frowned at her. She bumped him with her shoulder.

"Don't get me wrong, I still think it's... like, totally not _okay." _She mimicked a disgusted shudder and grimaced. _"_But I can see the logic behind it."

Closely watching the others and making sure that no one was listening in, he said, "Really?"

"Really really," she said gravely. "It's because you're like the first variation of him."

That made him lift an eyebrow. Mariella Evelyn Lawless, using a metaphor from potions? She was obviously a lot more drunk than she thought. "Uhm, how so?"

"Like, you're the first base potion, and he's the finished product," Mariella told him earnestly, gesturing with her free hand. "You already have the same traits and you both would work just fine, same effect and all. So far, so good. But he has the outward appearance and the... the reputation you want. But since you're not entirely stupid, you have come to understand, in your heart, that, only if you mix... uh, mix with him, you'll adopt all the good traits from him and become..." She pondered for a second. "A full-value... potion... and more than you were before."

"Uh-huh," he replied and watched with a slightly forced grin as Shrew fell backwards off his log during his theatre play. The idea that James Potter was the one, the _only_ one, forever, and that no one else would ever do... it made him uneasy inside and made the warmth turn into something more unpleasant.

"I'm serious," Mariella said again, apparently unwilling to let it rest. "You're basically jealous of him but at least you've understood that you need to be with him."

"That sounds somewhat retarded of me," he said tightly.

Mariella grinned smugly. "That's what love is, innit?" She leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. "If you want to be technical about it, jealousy's only just love that's been infused with anger, really. Blinded by anger so that they think their own house will become as nice as the other dude's when they tear his house down. You want to be him, and that's why you feel you need to be with him, because only when you're with him, you can be like him, savvy? And that's... that's actually quite okay because he's really quite bright, you know? Head full of potion-y stuff, much like you already, can't be blamed for that, I guess. And so polite that it comes across as arrogance, but then he also has that... that _poise_. And stuff. Good stuff. Still a _huge, _bloated prick and totally overrated, but there's _some_ substance at least. To, you know, to complement you, and shit."

She sighed again while Scorpius silently wondered why he himself couldn't have phrased all of that any better. Even when sober. Must be a female thing.

Gazing into her tankard, Mariella seemed to realise that she had just complimented James Potter. She grimaced. "Ugh. You know, maybe I _am_ drunk."

"You don't say," he said and laughed quietly.

"'Your equation can vary on both sides and still come out right in the end,'" she quoted, slurring the words a tiny bit, and clicked their tankards together.

For some reason, Scorpius perfectly understood what she meant with that, and it made him a little wistful. "Or at least not wrong," he said and took deep swigs of whiskey until it seemed like a good idea to sing along with Shrew and Prince.

/

"Macmillan!" he barked at the new seeker. "Would you _please_ focus on your task! I can see you twiddling your thumbs up there!"

She probably didn't deserve the harsh tone, especially since she was, by and far, the player who had screwed up the fewest things during this training session so far.

"Sorry, chief!" she called back with her helium-infused voice that belied her physical strength. "We've got ourselves a pair of spies!" He followed the nod of her chin toward the base of the spectators' stands.

From all the way up here, it should have been hard to say who it was down there, huddled in raincoats against the late October rain and wind. But Scorpius had been looking at that pretty, fair hair of hers way too often – she had persistently been sitting next to Potter every morning when he was there at all – so he recognised her.

"It's just Sullivan. Looks like some teacher or prefect is showing her around," he said loudly enough for Tallis Macmillan to hear. "Now get back to your damn task!"

"Aye, chief!" she squeaked and resumed her rounds looking for the golden snitch, although she glanced down at the visitors from time to time.

Scorpius ended the training ten minutes early but added a lengthy tirade about morale and dedication which his team took in with downcast eyes, stony silence and tiny nods. Frustrated and tired, soaked by rain and chilled to the marrow, they all decided to use the showers in the changing rooms instead of hiking back to the castle and catching a cold on the way.

The hot water washed the chief-dom and the harangue away, and soon Scorpius was just a fellow Slytherin again. It was relieving. Being the boss just wasn't really his preferred state, he had realised. But at least it put him in a position to decide _not_ to train using the cones.

"Hey, did you see the two gawkers?" Spencer Creevey, a fourth year who had got Lloyd Christopher's chaser position, asked no one in particular from the stall right next to his.  
>"Sullivan," Scorpius answered, squirting shampoo into his hair.<p>

"And Weasley," Brice Parkinson answered from the stall on the far side, confirming Scorpius' assumption that it had been a prefect showing the new teacher around. "Spying for the Gryffindorks, no doubt, the little-"

"The only thing she's going to be able to report is that the Slytherins are playing Quidditch as if they'd never done it before in their lives, Parkinson," Scorpius groused. Thankfully, it made Parkinson shut up.

"Sullivan is a pretty little thing, though, isn't she?" Daniel Thomas said from the stall by the door, also not addressing anyone but rather just putting it out there. "Doesn't look like a teacher at all, you know? More like a model or something."

"If you rather want her, you're going to have to move quickly, Dan," came Gemma Reedy's voice through the vent that connected the boys' and the girls' showers.

"That's no- That's not what I meant at all, Gemma!" Thomas called nervously. "You know I- I'd never...!"

"Seriously, though," Parkinson interrupted the start of Daniel Thomas' and Gemma Reedy's relationship crisis. "Sullivan is going out with Potter already. There's none of us that would stand a chance." Then, louder, he added, "You hear that, Reedy? Daniel here totally knows that Sullivan is out of his league. And way too old anyway. It was just an entirely neutral observation!"

Scorpius had stopped scrubbing his hair. Soap suds were running into his eyes and made them burn. "With Potter? She's- uhm, going out with him?"

"Yup," Parkinson answered cheerfully. "Saw them meself, last Sunday in Hogsmeade, just afore we met up with you and Lawless and the rest. Showed her Madam Puddifoot's an' all that. You know it's serious when you take 'em to Madam Puddifoot's."

"Dan, why haven't _we_ ever been to Madam Puddifoot's?" Gemma's voice came through the vent again. Thomas just spluttered.

Scorpius tuned their voices out and hurried to rinse the soap from his body and get out of this room.

Ironically, when he came into the changing room wearing a towel around his waist and his hair still a little soapy, there was a small grey owl sitting squat on his duffel bag. The note in its beak only read '_Come asap. Bring mop & bucket_'.

/**TBC**

_'Tie optional.'_

_On to the next chapter!_


	7. Chapter 7

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_In which feelings and other things boil over... aaaaand we're taking two steps back again because that's how you do it when you tango.  
><em>

_I also uploaded chapter 6 today. Have you read that already? Because you totally should if you plan on understanding what's going on in this one.  
><em>

/

**Chapter 7**

/

He was still fuming inside and mentally telling Potter to take his little grey owl and his shorthand note and shove it where only a forcefully applied long-handled stirring spoon might reach when he found himself huffing and puffing up the stairs, bucket alternately banging against his calves and the steps, mop lying heavily on his shoulder.

He opened the door onto a battlefield of fumes and puddles. Potter was standing in the middle of it, on a rickety-looking stepladder that was half a foot too short to let him reach the latch of the domed roof light. He was apparently trying to open it further to allow the smoke to escape, and failing.

"What the hell?" Scorpius said. The room was hazy with multicoloured fumes that were already making his eyes itch. The puddle seemed to be growing still although it was not obvious where the additional liquid could be coming from. There was a large greenish stain on the ceiling. One of the cauldrons, the one that had held the wound-cleaning potion last time he'd checked, was melting off the table, like in a Dali painting.

"Three quarters of an hour, Malfoy," Potter said, hammering at a rusty window latch with a spoon to no avail. It only made dust and cobwebs rain down onto him. "That's _as soon as possible_ for you?" He grumbled something that sounded like 'bloody unbelievable', then held out his hand and demanded, "Give me the mop."

Scorpius handed the mop over, mop-end first, bridging the large, oil-coloured puddle that divided the room like an ocean divided islands from one another.

"Now get to work. Contain first," Potter snapped as he got back to his own task of letting more air into the room before everyone in it would die of asphyxiation.

Scorpius quickly decided to first tend to the remaining cauldrons that were about to boil over, then collected all the reactive ingredients that were still lying around and temporarily stored them on a safe table out of reach, and finally tended to the two kettles that were still happily cooking away, utterly unimpressed by the chaos around them. Lastly, he mopped up the spill. It was thick like syrup or glue and smelled of copper knuts and wet dog.

Potter, having succeeded in opening the window with the help of the mop and some brute force, cleared the ruined cauldron and the potions away one by one, each time making a bunch of notes in his notebook. By the end of his round, only two kettles were left with liquids cooking in them. Scorpius was standing over one of them, counting to twenty-one before each new stir.

"Step back," Potter said gruffly. "I'll clear it up. Start from scratch."

"But why?" Scorpius stopped stirring. "These two are still perfectly fine."

"No, they're not," he barked, ripped a page out of the notebook and held it out to him. "Get these ingredients from downstairs."

"But-"

"I am _not_ going to repeat myself," Potter interrupted with barely restrained temper, glowering at Scorpius and following him with his eyes until he was out the door.

Scorpius took his sweet time collecting the items, muttering curses under his breath all the while until he was well and truly annoyed with James Potter, his pissy behaviour, the fact that he was going out with Alverdine Sullivan, and with the world in general. On his way back up to the brewing room, he pummelled the steps with his feet.

Potter greeted him with an "Ugh, finally" and all but tore the heavy basket with ingredients out of his hands. "I was just about to send out a search party." Scorpius rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth.

James ignored it and started instructing him using the bare minimum of words. From what Scorpius could tell, it was the same potions over again, except that the invigoratium and the lung clearing potion switched places for reasons James refused to expound, and that the wound-cleaning potion would now brew in a brass kettle instead of an iron one.

Today it felt like an insult when Potter went up to his table where he started the new wolfsbane and told him to "just deal with the rest" by himself.

Scorpius managed to keep quiet for more than an hour, hoping that the tension would ease, but it didn't. Annoyed and more than a little hurt, he broke the silence.

"So you're not going to tell me what happened?" He really tried to keep his voice neutral. "And what exactly am I doing here, anyway? I mean, you're not going to get any credit points for potions _I_ brew, so..." He trailed off, flicking pungous onion peel into the bin.

Potter gave no indication that he had heard. But Scorpius knew that he had.

"I didn't even see Professor Smith anywhere downstairs. Where is he? Shouldn't he help you out in a situation like this?" He stopped short of '_What would you have done without me?_', feeling that that would have been too forthright.

But when James still didn't react, he needled on, "So I guess I've been demoted again, eh? Back to the shut-up-and-obey kind of servant-"

"Damn it, Malfoy!" Potter had just been scribbling something onto another long roll of parchment – or maybe it was the very same? - that again curled around his feet and under the table. The quill broke with a snap. He tossed the useless end onto the floor as he turned around and toward him, spreading his hands in an impatient, almost helpless gesture. "What do you want to hear from me?"

"Just about _anything_ would be acceptable by now," Scorpius said, a bit more loudly and forcefully than he should, as he impaled one of the onions with the peeling knife. "Try_ talking_, and try doing it as if you didn't take me for some sort of brain-dead house-elf, maybe." _Also: Really!? That's _not_ a fair question._

They stared at each other across the room for several seconds.

Potter grimaced, then broke eye contact first and turned away again. Just when Scorpius was prepared to put down everything and leave – really leave – he started talking. More to himself than to Scorpius, but at least he talked.

"Apparently, the aconite fluid wasn't properly labelled," he said. He sharpened a new quill with the Swiss knife, put it aside and tended the boiling liquid in the kettle before him. "Concentration wasn't high enough, the rest of the belladonna wasn't completely dissolved. When I left it overnight, the belladonna residue vaporized. The smoke didn't escape through the hatch and reacted with the iron-and-salt- mixture in the wound-cleaning potion which weakened the kettle. I didn't even notice it, but when I added the hellebore about an hour ago, the thing just... And then..." His hand gesture approximated a growing puddle. "Chain reaction."

"That sucks," Scorpius commented quietly, then pressed his lips together when he realized that it could be misunderstood as innuendo.

He need not have worried because Potter was too angry to care about it anyway. "What _sucks_ the most is that the wolfsbane came out as a variation," he all but growled. "Instead of just being plain spoilt – a bloody _variation_." He exhaled mightily after the odious word was out.

Scorpius immediately remembered the conversation with slightly drunk Mariella. He looked up at Potter's back and suddenly wished for him to stop talking.

"Because of the mislabelling, I got a first base concoction instead of a proper potion which means that I wasted seventeen days of work. Seventeen. Days." He rubbed his eyes like a potion maker never should for fear of becoming blind or worse. "Not to mention several dozen galleons worth of ingredients."

"But... But a first base to wolfsbane is still really good," Scorpius pointed out tonelessly. "It's the same potion, it's got the same ratio of ingredient and therefore the same effect-"

"Maybe, or maybe not," Potter cut him off. "We're not talking about a cough expectorant here. It would be downright irresponsible to let anyone sample a variation of wolfsbane." He sighed exasperatedly and stirred his young wolfsbane-to-be with a large silver spoon. "As far as safety and usability are concerned, and within the rules of my apprenticeship, that brew is completely, utterly worthless." He murmured something inaudible, then added, "And since I added substances to substitute for runespore and dragon venom and all those rare, expensive ingredients, I can't even use it to extend a _proper_ wolfsbane potion. It's... it's just wasted. Dead-end variation. It will never become _anything_."

When Scorpius looked back on this moment that evening while lying in bed and staring at the dark ceiling sleeplessly, he wondered if he had taken it all so personally because the bad Quidditch practice before and James' bad mood had scraped his nerves raw, or if there were toxic fumes and pungous onion juice involved, or if Mariella's slurred words had simply hit the bullseye perfectly and made him irritable. Irrational. Vulnerable. Whatever the case, someone said with his voice, "That wouldn't have happened if you had paid more attention to this and less to Ms Sullivan, would it?" before he could stop it.

He refused to look up from his onion-cutting although he could practically feel James' eyes on him after the words were out.

"What did you just say?" Potter asked quietly which made it much worse.

"There's a woman and suddenly your mind is just elsewhere – was the same thing with Sarah, back in the days, wasn't it?" he blathered on. _Please, understand. _"I mean, I must confess that the instances of tardiness were probably largely my fault, but I don't think you can deny that you were distracted by her, big time. I mean, so was I, once. It was kind of her thing..."

"Malfoy, what is this about now? Why are you-"

"When you walked with her, did you take the way from Madam Puddifoot's to the station? So that you'd come by the Shrieking Shack?" _Did you walk by with her on your arm just when I was thinking about you?_

"Why are you saying these things?" Potter snapped at him.

"Because they need to be said, don't they?" he snapped back instead of a truthful _I don't know, I just want to make you hurt as much as I do right now _because that just sounded like crazy talk, looking up for a short moment but then looking down again because he still couldn't stand the disgust. _Please, understand. _"To clear the air? To avoid further misunderstandings? To get the past behind us?" He pushed the knife down with each snide suggestion.

_To show that Mariella was wrong, that you're _not_ what I have to aim for- Because you're _not_ perfect. You're far from it._

_Maybe that will keep you from running after Alverdine Sullivan._

He wiped his nose with his sleeve. "You know, you never answered my question, Potter," he said.

_I don't stand a chance, otherwise. Please, understand._

_I just don't think I can take running after you forever with no hope of ever catching up._

"Sarah Halberman," he said numbly. "Why did you break up with her?"

/**TBC**

_Ugh, hormones and the confusion, eh? But Coco is right - it needs to be f*cking said, otherwise there'll never be any snogging.  
><em>

_Be a dear, spare a review. (The gods reward all the good that you do...~~ )_


	8. Chapter 8

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

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_Hey hlodi :) Thanks for stalking me and this story!_

_zoe: Scorpius can't forget the phrase, either, even though it's not quite certain James actually ever said it ^^; Nothing more vicious than self-made rejection coupled with hurt pride, I suppose. _Thank you for reading, and for your review!_ I hope you'll enjoy the remaining four chapters as well!_

_FlowerSpaceship! Thanks for your reviews, my darling! Aaah! (-yelp of joy-)  
>Re:Review Stars - I have to tell you, your review made me grin so much my face hurt. "Perfect amount of smut" is the highest praise I think I'll ever receive, like, this is it - my life has peaked. Who would have thought that my stupid stories would elicit such strong emotions? xD (Actually, except for the last AstoriaDraco dialogue in Calais, I hated Daphne most. She's been the mastermind of the whole thing, she talked her sister into actually breaking her own family apart and persuaded her again when she was having second thoughts, and she was prepared to talk Draco into it, sweet smiles and fake concern and all, even using her own daughter to distract him. Astoria would never have dared to go through with it without her constant support. Layla comes in second on the most-hated-chart (for hopefully obvious reasons), leaving Astoria only in third place. Huh, if I didn't know better, I'd say I have a problem with female characters or women in general... Also: Yeah, Harry in Auror-mode is pretty much my personal epitome of badassdom. Raw power (dude practically killed Voldemort with an Expelliarmus, like, are you kidding me?), authority, and that uniform... hnngh.) Anyway, I'm so sorry for making you suffer like that - then again, it was my pleasure ;P Thank you for sticking with it despite the hardship! P.S.: The epilogue wasn't enough of a glimpse into the future for you...? I thought I had pretty much all bases covered. Well, uhm. What else did you have in mind?_

_Re: Review Ardor- Yeah, the twisted logic was entirely intended. As you could see, Scorpius took it real personal because of course he would. I'm just glad the variation/base thing apparently didn't cause confusion since I pretty much made that up._  
><em>Can you imagine Mariella's reaction if Scorpius were to tell her what's going on? She'd be SO furious with him. Firstly, how<em> dare_ he let his Slytherin honour be tainted like this - like, no self-respecting Slytherin would ever willingly become a frigging house-elf, not to mention a frigging Malfoy like himself, not to mention for a frigging Ex-Gryffindor!? He should earlier be a frigging man and face the consequences of his actions. And secondly - how dare he whine about this now?! He totally brought it on himself!? Getting a taste of his own medicine and all...! But I see your point :) If only Coco were a bit more realistic and reasonable (I wouldn't have anything to write about and/or my fics would be short and boring as f...)._  
><em>Oh, I know all about the wretchedness of getting hooked on forever unfinished stories. So I've made a vow to always finish my stuff entirely before posting it anywhere. I'm posting it bit by bit so that a) people actually see it (on the update page - I once uploaded my first story all in one go, hardly anyone read it. I was kinda sad, although I should be happy because the story isn't exactly the cat's pajamas), b) my borderline-ingenious cliffhanger chapter breaks aren't entirely wasted (just kidding) and c) I can do stuff like... this here. Talk to you. I'd be so sad if I couldn't.<em>  
><em>As for the Big Talk... your prognosis is alarmingly spot-on, really. Better go read it now.<em>

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_This one is the shortest chapter ever... but very dense, content- and drama-wise, so I'd hope it balances out...?_

_Anyway, let's descent into the bottomless pit of hurt feelings, inrequited love and teenage insecurity. Remember, the only way out is through - stay strong with me!  
><em>

/

**Chapter 8**

/

"Mordred and Morgane," Potter murmured through clenched teeth. He turned around, pointedly turned his back and bowed more deeply over the cauldron than was necessary or advisable. "I'm not talking to you like this."

"Oh, you know what, you don't have to talk. You've said so much already just now," Scorpius said, his voice light and sharp with sarcasm. "I'm just here, thinking out loud."

He let a few heavy, quickened heartbeats go by, waiting for Potter to tell him off more sternly, or forbid him to talk at all, or send him away altogether. He didn't do any of these things. Scorpius briefly wondered why.

"When I confronted Sarah, shortly after she'd broken up with me, she told me that I've, quote, 'ruined everything'." He spoke to himself and to the ginger root he was peeling now that the onion was finished. "I never really figured out what she meant by that before."

Scorpius scooped the ginger peel up, put it into a hot bath to draw out the essence, and wondered what he was saying. His mouth was moving as if controlled by the roiling feelings in his chest, bypassing his brain.

"Mariella told me, way, way later, that your relationship wasn't peachy from the get-go for some reason. Which was puzzling because, as far as I knew, you were everything Sarah ever wanted."

He stirred slowly, meditatively, and the flakes of ginger swirled in the gently fizzing water. "And you looked really happy to me anyway, fused together at the hip and all..." He remembered suffering through that Quidditch game. "I guess it's all about appearances, after all."

Potter didn't object. Maybe he was too absorbed by his task.

"I can only guess that your problems probably had to do with Sarah's, uhm, personality," Scorpius continued. "She's a demanding kind of person, in... in every respect."

He sneaked a glance at James. His shoulders seemed more tense than before, but other than that, there was no reaction.

"She was disappointed, wasn't she?" he asked. "In you, I mean? Physically? That's what you were scared she had told me, that day in the library, when you stormed out. It frustrated her so much that she dumped you after a few weeks."

"_She_ didn't-" Potter began, then swore under his breath, something about losing count. He removed the stirring spoon from his cauldron and started mincing some more mandrake leaves to start the induction process over again.

Scorpius remembered hearing about the break-up after the Christmas holidays. He recalled Shrew and Prince spreading ridiculous rumours about how Sarah had made approaches to Albus Potter during Christmas dinner. Then again, in every rumour there was a grain of truth, so Sarah and James probably _had, _in fact, ended it at the Potters' house. Scorpius imagined Sarah sleeping over, slipping under James' covers at night – and then being turned away.

Maybe that had been his appeal to her, really. The 'persistent virginity', the reservedness. The way that he didn't let his pants be charmed off by every girl – maybe Sarah had dreamt of the challenge. And then was hurt in her pride when she couldn't conquer him either.

'_I'm not mean. I'm just honest.'_

"So _you_ dumped _her_, or you broke it off by mutual agreement, fair enough," Scorpius shrugged. "But anyway, you ended it because of... carnal differences."

Potter chopped those leaves into oblivion with iron determination.

"And when you said to me that I was 'more her type anyway', you meant that... _I_ could sate her needs while you couldn't. Or wouldn't." Or both. "Because I had spoilt her, before, she was used to what she had got from me. But now she couldn't get it from you. She probably even held exactly _that_ against you, didn't she? That _I_ never made such a fuss about it."

Scorpius wondered, with an odd fluttering feeling in his stomach, whether that meant that James Potter was still... untouched, so to speak. It seemed very plausible that he had been when he had begun his short relationship with Sarah – but since then, much time had passed. There had been three long months of holidays in which all sorts of things could have happened.

"I always wondered why you even got together with Halberman in the first place. The first time, I mean," he went on, meanwhile cubing some shrivelfigs very neatly and swiping them into a bowl.

A memory of a birthday suddenly resurfaced – his twelfth or maybe thirteenth. He remembered handing Mariella a glass of peach juice, one with a blue little umbrella in it, and then kissing her on the mouth. He'd really only done it because Shrew's older cousin Constantine, whom his parents had more or less told him to invite, and the girlfriend he'd brought along – Jennifer? Janine? Judith? - had done nothing but gnawing at each other's face the whole afternoon every time the adults in attendance turned their heads. He remembered that kissing Mariella had been spectacularly unspectacular. Like kissing one's own knuckles.

Now he wondered whether Potter had felt like that with Sarah. Just that, unlike he and Mariella who had never done that again because once had been underwhelming enough, Potter had kept it going. Waiting, maybe? For the spark? Hoping for the _next_ kiss to be better? Or the next? Or the one after that? Until he couldn't pretend any more and broke up with her.

But then, something had happened, and suddenly he had been willing to try again, start over with her.

Scorpius hesitated for a long moment before saying, "And the second time, it was only because she said she'd been, you know, _me_, wasn't it?"

There was something about this question that burned on his tongue. He stopped poking at the ginger in the kettle and looked up.

"You were convinced that the person in the trophy room was her, and so you thought that you and her were compatible after all, after you started to enjoy-"

"Get me more petroleum jelly," Potter said loudly. With a furious downward stabbing motion and a bang he stuck the mincing knife into the chopping board. It made everything on the table jump, including the almost brimful bottle of petroleum jelly that stood right there. When he started leafing through the endless parchment, Scorpius saw how agitated his movements were.

"You also never really loved her, did you? Just like me," Scorpius asked quietly, to his own surprise and almost horrified at his own words. The truth could be simple and ugly sometimes. "You just wanted to be with someone _that_ way, but it didn't work out with her at the start, just like it didn't work out with whoever you tried it before. You didn't... connect." _Kissing your own knuckles over and over._ He paused. "But then you wanted to try again because you _did_ make the connection with-"

"Malfoy, I need more petroleum jelly," he said with a slight tremor in his voice. "Get me some from the ingredients closet downstairs. Immediately."

Never in his life had he felt this overwhelmingly that he owed an apology. He couldn't even say for what exactly. Nothing he had said had been intrinsically insulting. And, certainly, none of it had been new to Potter, so it couldn't have been shocking, either. It was just a feeling that he had just ruthlessly, tactlessly unearthed something about James Potter that he had dearly wanted to keep unmentioned and unspoken forever.

Once, he had wanted to make him hurt. And he had succeeded, although he wasn't sure how he had accomplished it. All he knew was that it also hurt himself.

At the same time he felt that he understood him a little bit now. Just a little. It made him a little glad.

He wondered where the perfect demigod had gone that he had once imagined Potter to be. If anything, Potter was more messed up than he was.

And still, Potter was who he wanted to be like. Who he wanted to be with. _Isn't that just absurd._

He sighed and, with a little rebellion in his voice, said "Yes, Master." With measured step, he walked down the narrow staircase for the second time today.

Halfway down, he thought he could hear Potter mumble angrily, "Don't _call_ me that."

The rest of the brewing session they didn't exchange a word.

/**TBC**

_Rock bottom has been breached. Things can really only get better from here, really.  
>(Or can they...?)<em>

_Reviews, comments, hate mail - I'm be grateful for everything*!  
>* Just a figure of speech. Please don't send me dick pics.<br>_


	9. Chapter 9

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_Thanks to SongoftheShadows for favving and to Virabelle for following this story!_

_Now to chapter 9, in which all the quarrelling and the drudgery finally pays off... or does it? Please enjoy!_

/

**Chapter 9**

/

Winter came to Hogwarts, bringing pre-Christmas cheer, castle fever and preliminary examinations, and sucking all the joy out of getting out of the warm bed in the morning.

Nine days went by without owls or summons of any kind – not that anyone was counting, of course. More than that, James Potter failed to appear in Potions class or in the Great Hall for mealtimes. Alverdine Sullivan had taken to sitting next to Professor Finnigan instead, leaning towards him and brushing her hair behind her ear when he talked.

"You should go visit him," Mariella said casually, and added, "Some pumpkin juice?"

He blinked at her offering the jug, then nodded to answer her question. She filled up his glass to the brim and he thanked her.

"It's like you're in an on-off-relationship, and you both take turns with the commitment phobia," she went on as casually as she had started which kept the others' attentions away very effectively. "Frankly, it's getting a bit pathetic." She paused. "Actually, it's always been pathetic, but it's getting patheticker and patheticker by the second and I just can't bear it. So go visit him."

He lifted his now filled glass of pumpkin juice to his lips. "If only it were that easy." He drank.

Only when he put down the glass again did he notice Mariella's pointed look. "What?"

"It _is_ that easy," she said. "Moron."

"Wh-"

"Did he order you to only come see him when he calls you?" she shot at him.

"Uh," he uttered, overwhelmed. "N-No?"

"Or to stay the fuck away from him forever?"

"No." _Not technically, anyway._

"And even if he had, you're not a bloody house-elf and he's not your bloody lord and master. You can do whatever the hell you want. So if you want to see him... " She touched a hand to his cheek, then slapped it not too lightly. In the end, she grinned. "Just go see him! Hopefully it'll stop your piteous sighing and...," she gestured at him in general as the grin melted into a grimace, "all that. The others are already thinking you're having a crush on Sullivan, what with all the looking in her direction."

"Wow, thanks," he bit out through a very fake smile.

"You're welcome," she said cheerfully. "Now let's go survive History and DADA and after that you'll go and act like a man for once, eh?"

Once upon a time, long ago, he had desperately waited for a Potions class to be over so he could meet with his kind-of girlfriend. He had experienced the relativity of time, how it felt endless because he was looking forward to something.

During the History lesson, the same thing happened. He was looking forward to seeing James Potter and so the hour stretched mercilessly.

Curiously enough, during DADA, the situation reversed itself. Mostly, he assumed, because at the beginning of the DADA lesson, he wondered whether James even wanted to see him – especially after last time – and came to the conclusion that he probably didn't. That he would send him away – politely as always but thinking disdainful thoughts by himself.

From then on, the end of the lesson practically raced towards him.

Two blinks of an eye later, he stood on the landing of the hellish staircase, panting heavily, and tried to get the muscles in his calves to untangle themselves.

The door opened. He went rigid like a deer in headlights. James looked at him – looked _down_ at him. He was, after all, at least ten centimetres taller, Scorpius remembered now. _How could I have forgotten that?_

"What are you doing here?" Potter asked rather gruffly. "I didn't send a note."

"I know." He tried not to sound wheezy. "I... hah, came anyway." _What an ingenious thing to say, _Mariella's voice drawled in his head_._ _Moron._

He looked past Potter to see that he had pushed tables together, with only one kettle brewing on top, surrounded by books and parchments. "What are you doing?"

"My job," Potter replied. "Is there a reason why you're here?" he rephrased his still-unanswered question.

_Go and act like a man for once._

"I wanted to see you," someone said.

Judging by the way Potter's face went carefully blank, it had been him. Out loud.

No one said anything for a few seconds.

"Can I-" Scorpius cleared his throat and nodded into the general direction of the brewing room with his chin. "Can I help?"

Potter hesitated. Scorpius could see the cogwheels turning rapidly behind his forehead even though his expression was still closed. Eventually, he asked, "Why?"

"Because I just want to," he replied honestly. "I liked to help."

"No. Why do you want to see me?"

"Because I... just... _want_ to," he said again, the sentence slightly curling upwards at the end as if it were a question. He honestly didn't have a better answer to offer.

Potter frowned for a second, before his face went blank again. "Okay," he said. "Okay, then." He stepped back from the door, letting Scorpius enter.

Unsurprisingly, the centre of his attention was still his second attempt at the wolfsbane potion, simmering away in the small copper kettle as always. Instead of six or seven, there were now only two other cauldrons, one a huge, bulbous beast of thick iron holding a dose of Dragon Tonic which stood in the corner, the other a shiny, medium-sized steel kettle of Chelidonium Miniscula.

"You can tend that one," Potter gestured at the smaller cauldron on its throne made of two tables amidst books and rolls of vellum. "The horclump juice will soon have to be thinned to a tincture. You've done that before, haven't you?"

"Last year, yes," he nodded. "But never by actual boiling like it's normally done. We added watered foxglove. Had the same effect."

"Yes, but that will not do for this recipe. It'll have to be done by hand. Properly."

Scorpius touched his fingertips to the paper before him. Chelidonium Miniscula wasn't a very complicated recipe but a fairly dangerous one. Half the ingredients were marked as deadly or poisonous or venomous or all three, the other as unpleasant. "Will you show me how?" he asked.

Potter looked over at him, frowning again, visibly thinking again. "Yes," he said eventually. "Sure."

Scorpius smiled in response. Potter turned away.

"I owe you an apology," he said as he got to work, preparing the steps that were detailed in the open pages before him. "What I said was out of line."

No response. As expected.

"I guess I owe you a boatload of apologies, really, but I believe we have already established that there's really no way for me to atone or really make amends, so..."

Half a litre of distilled spirits, heated to exactly seventy-nine degrees. Some freshwater pearls into the kettle, to better control the temperature, a metal strip of tempered cobalt into the flames, to see if it got too hot. Scorpius went through the steps with steady hands.

"I just want you to know that if there were a way, I'd-"

"Did you finish the preparation?" Potter cut in bluntly.

Scorpius nodded before he realised that he couldn't see him, occupied with the wolfsbane as he was. "Yes, I did. Not too complicated. Just above seventy degrees now."

"Wait until it's at least seventy-five before you stop heating it more." It sounded like the last word.

Scorpius sighed and didn't speak up again until, at least ten minutes later, the cobalt got a greenish hue, marking the seventy-fifth degree.

Wordlessly, Potter came over to his table, took a thimble between thumb and index of his left hand and curled the three other fingers around a stirring spoon. With almost artistic ease, he tilted the silver decanter full of horclump juice and filled the thimble to the brim without spilling a single drop. He then emptied the thimble into the almost boiling hot alcohol, commenced stirring immediately - "Twice sunwise, three times withershins," he instructed – and checked the metal indicator over and over again with each revolution. "If this gets hotter than seventy-nine, the potion will be useless. Hotter than eighty, it'll dissolve your cauldron, and it'll start splattering like hot grease." He handed over the thimble and the spoon.

"Twice sunwise, thrice withershins, never hotter than seventy-nine," Scorpius repeated as he took the instruments delicately from Potter's hands. Without touching. "Got it."

"Just don't get in contact with any of it. It'll eat through to your bones." He was already back on his way to his own kettle.

"Thanks," he said, and to himself, _Don't fuck this up_.

For the first few thimbles, he kept repeating the instructions under his breath. Soon, however, he realised that, while the potential for destruction was great, the brewing process was a deal less complex and busy than many others. The ingredients were few, and already prepared. The potion itself didn't even give off smoke.

By the tenth thimble of horclump juice, the motion pattern had started to sink into muscle memory.

"Won't this get you bad points on your apprentice schedule?" he asked once he felt confident that talking and doing the hand movements simultaneously wouldn't throw him off.

"Some," Potter admitted after another long pause. "I prepared the alcohol and the juice and put in the first thimble. That's sufficient."

"How does it work, exactly? Does that green book of yours have a list-"

"Malfoy, please," Potter interrupted with an irritated huff that actually silenced him.

Several minutes passed. Carafe, thimble, temperature, stir, temperature, stir, temperature. Lather, rinse, repeat.

"I'm sorry," he said meekly, and nothing more.

He suddenly realised that it had been a really stupid idea to come here, and he wanted very much to leave.

"You need to understand," Potter said all of a sudden, giving Scorpius a start.

"Understand what?" he asked when Potter didn't elaborate.

Carafe, thimble, temperature.

"Understand that this... is pointless, and a waste of time." He leafed through the book before him. The pages turned with a whip cracks. "For both of us."

Stir, temperature, stir, temperature. Scorpius frowned to himself.

It took him another thimble to catch on. '_This_', the pointless waste of time – Potter meant what he was doing. The questions. The meagre attempt at small talk. Even his presence, unwanted as it was, his offering assistance. His being here because he wanted to see him.

A pang went through his chest.

As if he had heard it and taken it for the fire of a starting pistol, Potter continued, "I could never-" He audibly drew breath. "Stop acting like that."

"Like what?" Scorpius asked. _Say it, coward._

"Like," he began, but then didn't continue for a long time.

"Like I care about you," Scorpius finished for him. _I'm not acting. _"You dislike it?"

"You might as well stop it," Potter said with an air of finality. "It won't- You won't get anywhere with it."

Scorpius bit his tongue for a long minute, diligently filling the thimble with concentrated horclump juice from the carafe and adding it to the cauldron, stirring twice clockwise, thrice counter-clockwise, checking the glowing metal again to make sure the concoction wasn't too hot.

Only when that was done did he allow his breath to escape, in a little huffing laugh that could not be helped.

"Is this funny to you somehow?" Potter asked tightly, looking over his shoulder with narrowed eyes.

"Ironic, maybe," he answered with a slight shrug.

"How so?" His voice had a cutting edge.

"Because," he drew out the word, "I got there before."

Potter flinched, then became motionless. Scorpius observed how his hands hovered over the cutting board, and how his shoulders tensed and wandered upwards.

"That," he said as if pressing the words forth from between locked jaws, "is not what happened."

"Yes, it is," he contradicted quietly. _I had your cock in my mouth. That's exactly what happened. _

_And you liked it and you're frightened it will happen again._

_And I'm not acting. Damn you. Damn you._

"It wasn't-" His fingers tightened around the hilt of the cutting knife. "That wasn't you."

_Just this time you won't be able to deceive yourself._

"Yes, it was." He wondered where the calmness came from.

"Not for me, it wasn't," James shot back, suddenly jolted back into motion, resuming the dicing of the bloodroot, twice as fast as before.

Scorpius understood, nodded and went "ah" softly. "In your head, I was Sarah." _Or someone else, anyhow. Someone female, in any case. _

_Someone acceptable._

James gave no answer, which was an answer in its own right.

"After what I said in the hospital wing..." Scorpius recalled the day, and his own words. "I told you she wasn't good for me, and you somehow got from that that she was- deviant like that, that she would do something like that. And after all, she would have a reason. She never stopped _wanting_ you."

He could picture it perfectly. All Potter had ever, desperately wanted was to be normal, especially after he had continuously not felt anything when being with someone. He'd probably already had a suspicion, an underlying, silent dread, well-hidden inside, that it might have to do with girls. In general. In principle.

And then he, Scorpius, had managed to awaken him, an invisible stranger. The kinky stuff was bad enough already, therefore, the stranger could simply not have been anything but female. It would have been unbearable. At least one part of the equation had to be... proper.

"Mind the tincture," Potter said as if he hadn't spoken.

"You wanted to believe it, that it was her, and from that point on, you didn't hold back any more. You felt it." He remembered that, too. He remembered the excitement, feeling him... stir under his hand. Now he understood that it was mostly relief. _Kinky – but not impotent, and not perverted. Not a... faggot._

"Mind the tincture," James repeated with an unsteady sigh.

"You told yourself it was Sarah, but who you felt was _me_." He enunciated each word clearly, gave each of it an emphasis. "You reacted to _me_."

_Enough with the hiding._

"If it had been Sarah," he continued, "you would have felt nothing. It would have been as before, when you were together. Therefore you only reacted that way _because_ it was me."

"Nonsense!" Potter slammed the book before him shut. There it was again, that restrained anger Scorpius had grown to hate so much. He turned towards him. "Had I known it was you all along, I'd never-" He swallowed down the words. "And anyway, none of it was _me_, either."

Scorpius narrowed his eyes.

"It was all just that disgusting spell of yours," James answered the unasked question. "I researched it. 'Heat of Passion', wasn't it? How _quaint_," he spat.

Scorpius set down the thimble he had just filled with the horclump extract, looked him in the eye and said, as clearly as he could, "I didn't use it."

"What?" James' expression went dark.

"I didn't use it," he repeated. "From the day at the hospital wing on, I never used the spell on you. Not even once."

He gritted his teeth. "You're lying."

"The author of the book I got the spell from wrote me a letter. I actually inquired about it because I feared that the spell was giving me feelings, too. But he explained to me that this spell does not have any side effects or after-effects on either the caster or the recipient-"

"Liar!" He had gone pale. "You're lying!"

"-and that it really just brings out the instincts and responses that are already there anyway. Inside."

"Shut up!"

He took a step toward Scorpius, then another.

"And in the end there, that was all you," he finished, heart pounding almost loudly enough to drown out his own voice. "The real you." _And the real me. And you wanted me. And neither of us was acting._

The real James Sirius Potter. The one who would hand himself over to an invisible stranger. The one who would moan and beg so beautifully. The one who would grab his hair and order him to lick and suck and swallow.

The same one who was now coming at him, his eyes piercing, reminding him once more of the fact that he was older, taller, and stronger. And that, technically, he still had leverage, technically, he was still the apprentice while he, Scorpius, was merely an assistant. Scorpius took a hesitant half-step back from his table, suddenly unsure.

"Potter-" he began without knowing what he really wanted to say, but got cut off.

"Take it off."

"What?" Scorpius voice was suddenly thin.

"Your robe," James said, coming toward him with determination. "Take it off."

/**TBC**

_Mwahaha. See you tomorrow evening for the second-to-last chapter, hopefully!  
>Be a darling, leave me a review :)<em>


	10. Chapter 10

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

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><em>FlowerSpaceship: Aww yiss, a review! I always get so clingy so quickly, and when y'all don't write any more I get insecure and become either convinced that a) my story has turned boring (the normal case) or that b) you have been kidnapped and are held hostage by terrorists in areas without WLAN or mobile reception so that you can't read and review any more (the special case) : But I see that you have a legitimate excuse :) Moving is such a pain... in the thighs and calves... I know every time I move I feel like I've just been exposed to the world as a compulsive hoarder. "I hope no one else is watching and counting all these boxes, omg. What do I need all this STUFF for?! Where did it all come from? How did this happen to my life?" I hope your flat-moving experience was less traumatic than that..._  
><em>Anyway! Re:Stars: Ha, that's a perfectly valid explanation for forgetting about Layla :D I don't know whether she really deserves the top spot in the Evil Female ranking, though. She did her job, what she was hired and paid to do, and then happened to be grossed out by Draco's true inclinations because her parents and culture f*cked her up. (Regardless of that, she's a total b*tch.)<em>  
><em>I guess I should go read Death of Today, huh? Seems that story has a lasting effect. (Reading other ffs while writing one myself is ridiculously difficult for me... so I'll put it on my list, if you can recommend it, so I can read it someday in the future when I've got nothing else on my mind.)<em>  
><em>Re:Ardor: Damn. Sorry for the confusion about the variations. I'll try to make things clearer next time. (English isn't your first language, either? I would never have guessed it. Good job! :) )<em>  
><em>No idea if I should be mildly offended by the idea that my ffs are as predictable as your mum's favourite soap operas... hmmm. Isn't predictability just a symptom of consistency coupled with attentive readerswatchers anyway? :'D "Oh, and I have the feeling, that the strip session won't end well, what with this extra dangerous potion left unattended... " See, this is just what I mean... Attention to the important details, such as a big pot full of boiling acid right on the table. (Which doesn't necessarily mean that the strip session will end badly, though :P) Anyhoo, thank you for reading and reviewing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!_

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_Nudity and bad language ahead (not in that order). This is the second-to-last chapter, everyone! Please enjoy, for the penultimate-th time...!  
><em>

/

**Chapter 10**

/

"Take off your robe," Potter demanded, more impatient now.

"Wh- why?" Scorpius stood frozen to the spot and suddenly more than a little afraid- in a... in a _good_ way.

_Fuck, that doesn't even make sense_, his inner voice snapped angrily. He frowned.

"I told you to mind the damn tincture," Potter growled as he went and snatched up one of the pails of water that stood in the corner near the Dragon Tonic. Water sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the bare concrete floor. "It's eating through. Take it off!"

"Wha-What?!"

Scorpius looked down on himself for the first time and noticed a hole about the size of his hand growing on his robe. It was rapidly growing outward with bright-orange edges as the horclump tincture ate through the fabric, revealing his white shirt underneath. As he watched, the white also started growing black blotches as if being sprinkled with ink. Only now did he smell the stench of burning fibres. Small black flakes were snowing onto his shoes.

"Fuck!" he yelled and frantically shed his robe, pulling the clasp open so roughly that it tore off with a loud, silvery _ping!_-sound, then quickly continued with his shirt. He ripped the buttons open – they clicked as they rained onto the floor – shrugged out of the garment, twisted and stepped on it to pull his trapped hands out of the sleeves. There was a itchy, burning sensation on his skin. He gritted his teeth against it. "Fuck, fuck!"

"Malfoy!" James called just as he had succeeded in ridding himself of the shirt's cuff's tight clutches. Scorpius turned around and was hit by a flush of cold water when Potter threw the pail's content at him.

The burning and prickling subsided. He patted the bits of skin that had previously been on fire, just to make sure. Breathing hard, he fought down the panic.

As it retreated, the cold set in. His hair was dripping water into his eyes. The front of his trousers was soaked through, the wetness was slowly making its way down to his knees, and, quite noticeably, through to his underpants. The cold sensation around his privates actually made him gasp and he swore he could feel his testicles retreat into his body.

He wondered why it was so normal to be stark naked in the Quidditch changing rooms and the boys' showers in Slytherin quarters, but mortifying to be shirtless in front of James Potter.

"I _told_ you to be careful with the boiling horclump tincture," Potter chided him again, emphasising every word, pail still in hand. "Did you get anything on your trousers or your shoes? Let me see."

Feeling numb and really stupid, Scorpius actually twirled for him once.

When he finished the turn, Potter dumped the rest of the water on his head. "For good measure," he said when Scorpius glared at him through watery eyes.

His discarded clothes were doused with the second pail. "Tell me you didn't have your wand in your robe pocket somewhere," Potter said as he carefully spread the sopping wet, holey fabric with his foot, searching for still-smouldering patches.

Scorpius shook his head. "Left it in the dorm," he said. Sometime during the second week of being his assistant, he had realised that he didn't ever need it. Potion-making just didn't call for foolish wand-waving and silly incantations, even though it probably would have come in handy when the roof window needed to be opened and the spill needed to be swept up.

And maybe, subconsciously, he had wanted to avoid the temptation.

"Lucky you," Potter said. Then, inspecting the kettle, "Yeah, this one's messed up. We'll have to start over."

For a moment, both of them just stood there and took deep breaths.

_We'll have to start over _seemed to hang in the air like potion fumes, sweet and heady and elusive. Scorpius breathed in to say something like "Is that even possible at this point?", but then it occurred to him that it wasn't his place to ask this, after everything that had been said - after everything _he_ had said to James. So he shut his mouth again. Only when it was closed did he fully realise that Potter had been talking about the potion and nothing else, and he was silently relieved for a second.

But then the relief dissipated, too. He sighed.

Scorpius didn't even dare to move his head when James walked across the room, toward the door. He waited for the sound of the door handle creaking and a cold gust of wind even though he had no idea where he might be going.

"Catch!"

He flinched and turned in the last possible moment. Potter threw him a towel from the cot in the corner. Scorpius fumbled but at least didn't drop it. "Thank you," he mumbled.

While Scorpius dried himself off as best he could, James tended the abandoned thimble full of horclump juice and the wolfsbane with calm precision, ignoring the shivering, half-naked Slytherin in the room with apparent ease.

Scorpius cleared his throat. "I guess I'll leave, then." He hugged the towel to himself. It smelled of detergent and, pleasantly, of something else. "Can I- uhm, borrow this for a bit?"

James stirred the wolfsbane twice more, then put the spoon aside with great care, looked at him and said, "Turn around."

He blinked. "Why?"

He gave a long-suffering sigh. "Just do what I tell you for once."

And then opened the upper clasp of his own robe.

All responses along the lines of 'Are you _kidding_ me, I've been doing what you're telling me for _months_ now!' promptly got stuck in his throat. Scorpius, startled and wide-eyed, turned around on his heel so quickly it almost gave him a whiplash.

"You'll catch your death otherwise," Potter said. "Not to mention that it would reflect badly on me to have you run around the castle semi-nude."

Clothes rustled.

Scorpius caught himself twice as he tried to glance over his shoulder.

Clothes rustled some more.

"I meant it," Scorpius told the bare wall before him. "You know. I _do. _Care." _About you._

"You've got a weird way of showing it," James retorted dryly.

"I know." He chuckled once, but became sober very quickly. "I fucked up." _How often will I have to reiterate that? _"It's an easy enough thing to do, showing that, you know, one cares... in concept. In practice - not so much." _So much stuff can go wrong and before you know it you end up sucking a dude off against his will._ _  
><em>

He practically heard the nodding.

"I- can't undo... what I've done." He whispered 'dammit' at himself when his head turned of his own volition again. He only caught a glimpse of white.

"And even if I could, I... don't know if I would, really." Suddenly his heart was in his mouth. "Even though it was... really messed up, I- I liked it." He hesitated, then dared to add, "And so did you. I think. Just a little. And that's not even remotely an excuse. Just... an observation."

More rustling. Potter remained silent. At least he didn't deny it.

"So, uhm." He took a gulp of air. "Tell me." Now that all this had been said and done, it seemed impossible to go on like before. "What do I do now?" he asked and put all the weight into it that had been resting on his heart for months and months, all the confusion and distress, and threw what little hope he had onto the pile as well.

"Arms."

His voice was so loud and close that Scorpius flinched with an embarrassing 'huaah!'-sound and turned his head.

Potter stood right behind him, visibly wearing his grey brewer's coat over nothing, holding a white shirt by the shoulder seams.

"B-But I can't-!" He jerkily shook his head. That triangle of bare skin at the base of his throat drew his eyes like a magnet.

"Arms," he repeated evenly, unperturbed by the back talk.

After spluttering some more and blushing without good reason, Scorpius slipped, right arm first, into the sleeves of the shirt and shrugged it on.

There was something familiar and friendly about the gesture, including the monosyllabic, repeated command. He imagined that this was how James, in his capacity as the eldest brother, had helped Lily Luna dress when she was still too small to do it by herself, or maybe reluctant to wear her coat while playing outside.

The shirt was a size too big, still warm and smelled really good. He started buttoning it up. His fingers were twitchy.

"What else?" Even though he focussed on the buttons, he still managed to do it wrong. He huffed, frustrated with himself. "What else do I do?" _What else _can_ I do?_

He waited for long moments, until he stopped expecting anything.

He flinched again when he felt something on his upper arm.

The warmth of James' palm and fingers seeped right through the relatively thin fabric of the borrowed shirt, poured onto his skin, soaked into him as if it were much, much more than the simple touch of a hand.

"Be patient." Potter's voice was barely above a whisper, but it was loud enough to hear. "This is- It's complicated. Gi...Uhm. Give me time. Please."

Scorpius lifted his hand and brushed his fingertips against his knuckles, so lightly that they barely even made contact. So lightly that he didn't pull away.

"Yes, James," he said.

/**TBC**

_Thank you for reading this far! Ready for the last chapter?  
><em>


	11. Chapter 11

Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

_zoe: Thanks for the review :) Don't be too sad, stories need to end lest they shrivel up and die pitiful and inglorious deaths. I hope this chapter cheers you up - it sure cheered me up when I wrote it :D_

_FlowerSpaceship: So sorry, I'm not a sequel person ^^; (Remember, Ardor was actually once part of Calor. It's not a true sequel in that sense, although I hope that making it a 'new' story didn't strike anyone as stupid and superfluous...) I just feel that the overcoming of the obstacles – the ones we create ourselves, mostly – is the most interesting part of the way to 'romance'. After that, there's just nothing else for me to write about :'D I suck at relationships irl myself, so I don't know how to frame them in fiction, either *sigh*. I'm currently working on a massive beast of a story together with my beta-reader and friend Nia... Sprawling, wordy and brimful with angst and darkness, just the way I like it :P I hope I can finish it before my future catches up with me._  
><em>Recommendations: If you actually go over to skyehawke (the archive in which you can find A Thousand Beautiful Things), I can recommend anything by Duinn Fionn, NovemberSnowflake and Calligraphy. Their stories are insanely good.<em>  
><em>Re:Mariella: I think she might not even notice the shirt – the wet stain on his trousers and the content glow on his face would probably distract her from such details (remember, she doesn't have the brewer's brain...). But you can bet she's relieved as heck that Scorpius finally stops his whining and whingeing :D <em>  
><em>Oh, you're German, too! :D Dann hätten wir ja auch auf Deutsch kommunizieren können... Huh. Too late now I suppose ^^; Thank you for all your reviews and your enthusiasm, love!<em>

_Also, thanks to ihrtryoma for the review, to ThePureEvil for favving/following this story, and to giganemo for favving Calor. (I assume/hope you'll come through here at some point...)_

_Here we are, at the end of all things. Enjoy, one last time!_

/

**Chapter 11**

/

Somehow, Scorpius survived the pre-Christmas exams. Mariella had been partially right: managing his running workload was more difficult because he had to reconcile it with assisting in the dungeon, but dropping Runes _had_ helped a lot. Plus, after Scorpius had relentlessly needled him with questions, Potter had given away tiny morsels of advice about the exams he himself had taken only a year ago. With that, he even got through Transfiguration all right. Not that McGonagall would ever let it show.

He then survived the Christmas holidays although his aunt plus husband and his two obnoxious cousins Queenie and Laurel had stayed over at the Manor for three whole days. Incidentally, they were fifteen and twelve, just like Albus Severus and Lily Luna were, and Scorpius' respect for James Potter and his saintlike patience grew a whole lot. At the same time, he was ever more grateful for being an only child.

After returning to Hogwarts – for the _actual_ last time, this time, Scorpius realised when King's Cross Station vanished behind the bent again – classes and hours in the dungeon resumed as if there hadn't been a break at all. Even the Transfiguration lessons with Ms Sullivan were the same, a seamless continuation of classes with Professor McGonagall. He hadn't thought that young, pretty, genial-looking woman to be capable of taking the exact same hard-line approach as the dour old headmistress, but she was. Like a perfect clone. Scorpius' antipathy towards her quickly mellowed from personal to professional. He ended up asking Shrew for more one-on-one- studying and help with Transfiguration homework, eventually bribing him successfully with the pin-up picture of Annabelle Warren on her broom.

Potter was uncommunicative as ever – or, as Scorpius now preferred to think of it, so absorbed and focussed that he lost the ability to speak because multitasking was his one true weakness. He barely seemed to register the holidays, or that he had been gone, or that he was back, but rather ticked off potion after potion in that green notebook of his, and kept on tweaking that wolfsbane that was still simmering in its miniature copper kettle, dead set on getting it right this time around. It made Scorpius think of the car engine he had seen in the trial lesson for Muggle Studies, which he ended up not electing. Potter was all effortless power and grace, a symphony of parts moving, seemingly tirelessly, in perfect harmony, unswervingly toward a single goal. Most days, he seemed to be running on determination and bottomless enthusiasm for potion-making alone. He never took lunch or dinner or toilet breaks, none that Scorpius noticed anyway. It seemed that he never took breaks at all.

It made the little moments in which this machine stuttered all the more precious.

Scorpius had caught him looking twice since the day he had left the dungeon wearing a wet, cold pair of trousers and a dry, warm shirt. And since those glances had been so very sneaky, he imagined that there had been several instances in which he _hadn't_ noticed him watching.

If it weren't for those moments, Scorpius might have thought that their relationship had been purely, entirely professional now, and would forever be. All they ever talked about, if they talked at all, was potions- and school-related. There was always more than an arm's length between them, if not an entire brewing room. The hierarchy of their arrangement didn't feel so steep any more, and just about every ugly word had been said already, so the explosive potential was gone. They certainly weren't Master and slave any more - if they ever had been, that was. On normal days, Scorpius qualified their relationship as that of senior student and assistant; on good days, he tentatively considered the word 'friends', even though it came with a mile-long footnote. There were no emotional outbursts, and because Potter had made it a habit to be doubly strict on workplace safety, there certainly was no more nudity, semi or otherwise.

Scorpius often wondered just how much time he would need, and just how patient he was supposed to be. Or if he had just said that. Or if he had changed his mind in the meantime and had simply forgotten to tell him. If Professor McGonagall would announce, in the very last bit of her two hour farewell speech, that James Sirius Potter had brought his apprenticeship to a successful conclusion and would now go on to study under Potions Guru Fuckknows in Wherever, and that he had, in fact, left earlier the same day to catch his portkey.

When he dared to ask Mariella about it – Hogsmeade again, after two large glasses of whiskey to muster the courage – she had slapped him in the back of the head and just said, "Moron." So he had resigned himself to this comfortable but increasingly dissatisfying stalemate and did the only thing he could: he waited. And tried to catch more of those small moments that made his heart race with hope.

/

It was a Sunday in February, the last day of a brutal brewing weekend. Scorpius was just done with the ingredients closet inventory – the last item on his mile-long to-do-list – and folded the rackety stepladder with some effort, then shoved it under the desk with the powders, sands and granules.

When he got back up and turned around, Potter was standing in the doorway.

After jumping, once and briefly because he hadn't heard him coming at all, Scorpius immediately noticed the curiously dark expression on his face. There was a wrinkle between his eyebrows and the muscle along his jaw was working visibly.

That was odd. Although it had been a long day and hard work, everything had gone fine and according to plan and schedule. The two potions, both marked with "13 out of 17 flasks in difficulty" in the _Advanced Potion-making Quarterly_, had come out perfect. He wasn't supposed to be displeased about anything.

Scorpius cleared his throat when silence prevailed for many seconds. "Uh, yes?" he prompted stupidly because he didn't know how to stress 'Did you want anything?', 'Did you need anything?' or 'Can I help you with anything?' without it sounding like an allusion to something inappropriate.

That was one of the rules of waiting, of stalemate. No allusions, ever. The rules were made of iron.

Potter appeared to be chewing his own tongue or the inner lining of his cheek and still said nothing. It reminded Scorpius of that time on the Quidditch pitch, when Potter had come to him with the first rude note. He remembered being endlessly annoyed that Potter was still so cool and composed and hadn't said a word.

Which was really weird because the Potter standing in front of him was clearly anything _but_ cool and composed, even though he _still_ didn't say a word and didn't move too many muscles. Behind the silence, Potter was like a boiling cauldron and he could see it plain as day.

"I... think... I'm done for today," Scorpius said in a conversational tone. "I completed the agenda, at least. You told me the tincture will simmer for two more days, maybe three because of the sea salt concentration, so I left the jar with the beeswings out for now, you know, to balance it out if you must. I put all the other stuff away, though," he started counting on his fingers, "filled out the lists, cleared and cleaned the tables, wiped the boards, swept the floor, did the inventory, made sure all the jars are label-front, double-checked the acids, the corrosives and the volatiles... so... I'm done."

Because it had been a weekend, and because the potion was basically finished after two days except for the simmering, Professor Smith had approved of their using the regular potions classroom for this one. It meant sweeping and cleaning everything – even the stuff they hadn't dirtied, used or so much as looked at, like the front desk which Scorpius had spent two full hours polishing yesterday – but at least he didn't have to run the stairs. _Fucking worth it._

Potter still said nothing. He got as far as opening his mouth but snapped it shut again with a glower. Scorpius sighed softly, figuring that there wasn't any way to extract his thoughts from him by force, either – another rule of the stalemate, not that it mattered much because he had no idea how that could be accomplished – so there wasn't much of a point in waiting.

He took two steps toward the exit – and toward Potter, inevitably – and prepared to slither past him. The closet door wasn't exactly wide but there looked to be a way to get out of it even without touching him, should he not be willing to move. All it would take was a little bit of bending. Luckily, he had never been burly or inflexible.

The most important rule of the stalemate: No touching.

However, Potter reached out with his arm, grabbed the doorframe and thus blocked the path. Decisively.

Scorpius stopped in his tracks and huffed, slightly irritated. "What is it, now?" he asked, looking up at him even though James did his best impression of seventh-year-James-Potter-walking-by-sixth-year-Scorpius-Malfoy-on-the-corridor. Which meant that he was looking – frowning – around the closet and anywhere but at him.

"Potter, I want to go to sleep," he all but begged. "I've been up since seven thirty, with the early Quidditch training and all. It's already past seven now. I barely had time for dinner because of this here, and there's still homewo-"

"Why did-?" Potter interrupted him but didn't finish.

With interest, Scorpius noted a certain redness blooming on his usually pale cheeks. "Why did who what?" he asked quietly when James refused to continue.

James craned his neck to look behind himself, as if there were any risk that they weren't utterly alone in the classroom – and as if there was a super-secret conversation going on here that no one was supposed to overhear. _If only_, Scorpius thought wistfully. In moments like this, James Potter's reticence was really a bit of a challenge. Being patient was hard when one had been patient for so long on an unsteady diet of little morsels to give you hope.

"I don't know why the chicken crossed the road, either," Scorpius tried to joke with a lifted eyebrow, "if that's what you meant."

Potter still said nothing. If anything, his glower deepened.

"Look, I can't answer a question you don't ask." He sighed, then started guessing. "Is it about the tincture? Or your next project? Ingredients? Time schedules... again?"

He knew that the preparations for his final N.E.W.T.s would soon become a bit of a hassle to plan around, and that the apprentice's schedule in Potter's green notebook wasn't forgiving, either, the last few potions on that list the most devilishly complicated ones to date. They were working very well together now – like a pair of engines – but Scorpius knew that the seventeen days lost to the meltdown in October last year were still heavy on James' mind. Smith hadn't been joking when he said that his brewing plans were 'very demanding, mentally and physically'. Maybe even a little too ambitious, even though James was absolutely determined and really, really good at potionmaking.

Nonetheless, Scorpius was getting a little desperate. It was late, and as pleasant as it was to overtly look at James – from the front, even! - standing in the doorway like a Grecian guardsman, he did want to get back to the Slytherin quarters soon, get the rest of his homework done for tomorrow, cram just another half an hour for the DADA quick exam that would probably happen tomorrow morning because Professor Finnigan was a cruel, cruel man, and maybe, if he was really lucky, go to bed before ten thirty.

James drew breath, then closed his eyes and asked, with audible strain in his voice, "Why did you-" And then it all just came out at once. "Whydidyouputitinyourmouth?"

Dumbfounded for full ten seconds, Scorpius stared at him as James' face grew redder still.

"I don't- understand it. I-I just don't," he stammered.

Now that the dam was broken, words practically rushed out of him, falling over one another. Scorpius wondered just how long they had been pent up in there. It certainly sounded like it had been forever.

"It's disgusting, why would you do that? That's not normal to even- How do you get that idea in your head to take someone else's-...? I mean, you're a _guy_. Why would you-? It's _unsanitary_ and-"

Scorpius wondered if the banana he had eaten during a short break had anything to do with this. In any case, he hadn't realised that James had seen him eat. Then again – his glances _were_ really surreptitious.

James shook his head in a frustrated gesture, then stretched out his hand when he thought of something. "And then you wrote that note and I did that spell when I tried to find out who the sender was but it burnt up in the process and- and it just told me that it was _sincere_, and- _Who_ does such a thing, and then _likes_ doing it? Why-"

Scorpius pressed his lips together, but to no avail. Giggling laughter broke free and bubbled first through his nose, then through his mouth, until he was genuinely laughing out loud. The sight of Potter, flustered, somewhat cross, his face endearingly red, only made it worse.

Still chuckling, in a daring mood, he reached out and caught the front of Potter's robe. Thereby breaking the first law.

He pulled at it – much gentler than Potter had last pulled at his – until Potter gave in and hesitatingly stepped towards him, over the threshold into the ingredients closet.

He then switched sides with him – sliding past and _accidentally_ brushing his shoulder – turned and pulled the wide-open door shut by the heavy brass handle so that the deserted Potions classroom and the entire rest of the castle were locked out. He even turned the key. The lock clicked with a reassuringly solid sound.

The privacy of the ingredients closet was absolute. The air was immediately heavy with a certain type of nervous anticipation. Scorpius felt it, a sweaty heat crawling up his neck toward the roots of his hair. He wondered whether the magic was in the confined spaces themselves, or if it all depended on the person with whom he shared said space.

James frowned and looked past him. This time, however, Scorpius felt that it wasn't because he didn't want to look at him, but because he wanted to look at him _too much_.

"Malfoy-"

"Don't."

Their eyes met and no more words, which just tended to confuse people anyway, were necessary.

James had backed up against the old desk with the powder jars. They rattled delicately when he curled his fingers around the edge of the desktop.

Scorpius came closer until it didn't take half an arm's reach to touch him. When he did touch him, lightly brushed his hand against his arm, he could hear his breath catch in his throat, he could hear him swallow nervously. James' eyes went a little wide.

He remembered being overwhelmed by James Potter once. It had taken him a thrust of his hip and a helpless moan to make Scorpius shake in his boots the way he did now – and all it had now taken him was a look and that unconscious hitch of his breath. He didn't know if this meant that it was getting better or worse. Maybe both.

His fingers slid up his arm, across his shoulder, to his neck, finally touching skin. He felt the stubble there, and the throbbing in the artery just underneath the skin, and the warmth. With the back of his fingers, he caressed his jawline, the side of his face and his temple.

James exhaled a shivering breath and, in a conspicuously rapid movement, lifted his own hand to tightly press Scorpius' palm against his cheek. When he slightly turned his face and touched his lips to the tender spot on the base of Scorpius' wrist, Scorpius started to shiver along with him. Goosebumps rolled up and down his entire body, every hair stood on end.

_So that's what it feels like,_ he thought. _That's what it feels like to _actually_ be touched by James Potter._

The shiver in his heart that he had constantly be carrying around for months now and which had lain dormant for a while, patiently waiting, grew in magnitude until he became a little dizzy with pleasure when he imagined how that mouth would feel in other places of his body.

They stood like that for a moment or an eternity or both, but it was too short a moment still. Scorpius went to rake his fingers through his hair, all over his scalp to the back of his neck, and then again, and again because James' eyes glazed over so nicely when he did. And because he could.

Then, he reached out with his other hand to touch his waist. And continued from there.

James went "Ahh", his body jerked as if he had got an electric shock, and his face flushed even deeper.

When Scorpius finally managed to catch his eye again, he smiled at him. Innocently at first... but then not. James swallowed, hard, when he saw it.

As Scorpius slowly went down on his knees before him, he suggested with a breathy voice, "You know you can close your eyes if you want to."

He didn't.

/

/

~~ **F I N** ~~

_Told you I'm a sucker (heh!) for happy endings. :D  
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_Man, I had sooo much fun writing this. I hope you had the same while reading? Thank you, in any case, for staying with this story for so long. Write me a review if you have the time :) If you log in I promise I'll reply.  
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